


Impossible Adventures Through Space and Time

by rosewarren



Series: Just an Ordinary Boy [10]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-05 22:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4198296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewarren/pseuds/rosewarren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wrote this so, so long ago.  I wouldn't make the same writing choices today but the only thing I've changed are the chapters.  I've combined them to make everything flow better and so the final work isn't so massive.</p><p>Bad Wolf lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Torchwood Hub  
Cardiff, Wales

 

A normal day in Cardiff. Some Weevils to track down, a strange weather disturbance to clear up. Nothing too unusual.

Deep in the Torchwood Hub, Captain Jack Harkness sits at his desk, sipping coffee and lazily doing some paperwork. He’s thinking about lunch, and about how boring normal days can be. He hasn’t had too many boring days in his admittedly long life, and thankfully Cardiff keeps him busy. But the days where there are nothing to do leave him with too much time for thinking.

When you’ve lived as long as he has, and done and seen as much as he has, it’s not always a good idea to let your thoughts wander.

Across the room, Gwen Cooper logs off of her computer. “That’s it,” she reports. Looking around the quiet area, she frowns a bit. “Now what do we do?” Gwen’s not really one for quiet, either. Torchwood has corrupted her.

“Wait for another Weevil,” Jack suggests.

Gwen smiles. “I’d rather not do that, thanks.” 

“Ianto’s downstairs.” Jack watches her carefully. Sometimes, even after all this time, Gwen gets quiet and sad if the Hub is empty and they’re alone. The time after their coworkers were killed stays with her. Jack considered it a good day the first time Gwen willingly used Tosh’s old workstation. 

“Is he arranging his tourist brochures, then?”

“Probably.”

Gwen glances at her watch. “I’ll just go and see if he’s hungry. I could do with some lunch. You?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

Before lunch arrives Jack heads out for a routine alien disturbance. It turns out to be a false alarm. By the time he gets back to the Hub, lunch is already there.

“You could have waited for me,” he complains.

“We could have,” Gwen agrees. 

“There’s a slice of pizza left,” Ianto offers, indicating the table.

Jack snorts. “Sausage.” He picks up the slice, now stone cold, and bites into it.

Gwen giggles. “Remember how mad you were, Jack, when you realized Owen had been ordering pizza under the name Torchwood?”

Jack shakes his head. “Of all the -”

A screech from overhead makes them all look up.

Gwen starts. “Is that coming from in here?”

“The Rift,” Ianto begins, but Jack holds up his hand.

They hear the screech again, and it’s a lot closer.

“The pterodactyl,” Ianto says almost under his breath. “What’s gotten into her?”

“It’s not her feeding time,” Jack says, greatly concerned.

The screech fades away, signaling the dinosaur’s flight back to the heights of the building.

“That was weird,” Jack states. “Ianto, make sure you feed her soon. We don’t need her paying us a visit.”

 

Three days later the computers start to flash, turning off and on repeatedly.

“Some Rift action coming across,” Gwen reports.

“Some?” Jack asks from his desk.

“Yeah. Minor stuff.” Gwen pauses. “Or not.”

Gwen is tracking the signals but everything returns back to normal before she can record any information. “Lost it,” she reports.

“So was it the Rift or not?” Jack demands.

“That wasn’t Rift activity, Jack,” Gwen tells him.

“What was it?”

“Something strange is going on,” Ianto states. He clearly does not like the prospect.

“Well, if it’s not the Rift it’s gotta be something else,” Jack says, peering over Gwen’s shoulder.

Gwen continues to gaze at her monitor. “These readings just don’t make sense, Jack.”

“This is Cardiff. A lot of stuff here doesn’t make sense.”

Ianto shakes his head. “You can say that again.”

 

Later that day Gwen pauses while writing a report. “What is that?” she asks in alarm. This is becoming a disturbing trend.

An ominous sound is coming from somewhere above. They all look upwards. 

Jack stands up. “What is that? It’s not the pterodactyl again.”

Ianto comes in downstairs. “Do you hear that?” he demands. “Whatever it is just scared away a group of students from Melbourne.”

“The bird,” Jack begins in extreme irritation. “Ianto, I thought I told you-”

“It’s not the pterodactyl, I just fed her yesterday. And she wouldn’t make this kind of noise.”

A vibration passes beneath their feet, causing everything in the room to shake violently. Ianto pitches forward.

Gwen makes a grab for her chair, trying to track the activity. “Is this an earthquake?”

Jack is standing as still as he can with the room shaking all around him. “It doesn’t feel like an earthquake.” 

“The Weevils are going crazy in the cells,” Ianto reports, checking the cameras.

Gwen stands up. “I’ll go-” She stops as the roaring gets closer.

“This can’t be good,” Ianto mutters.

“Look out!” Gwen exclaims.

A crack of light flashes into the room. They all shield their eyes and wait. 

A beam of energy opens up right in front of them. Ianto involuntarily takes a step forward.

“Stay back!” Jack snaps. He’s taken out his gun, though he has no idea what’s happening.

Something drops to the floor, and the beam of light closes up as if it had never been there.

They move forward as one, cautious but quick, guns drawn.

There is a figure lying on the floor. Ianto stands above it, gun at the ready, as Gwen moves to it. Jack covers them both with his gun, just in case.

“It’s -” Gwen crouches down beside it and then looks over her shoulder at Jack.

Jack blinks in surprise. “Huh.”

 

Jack Harkness has lived a long time and seen a lot in that time. There’s not too much that can surprise him these days.

He’s surprised now.

“One male,” Gwen reports. “Human, by the look of him. Young.”

“Are you sure he’s human?” Ianto wants to know. He’s still training his gun on the figure, just in case.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gwen snaps. “What else would he be?”

“You work here and you’re asking that?” Jack says. “Really, Gwen, I expect more from you. Let’s get him to an exam table.”

The boy is unconscious when Ianto lays him down on the table. The area is no longer Owen’s domain, but Gwen can never stand here without picturing him there. She knows she should be over that by now, Jack and Ianto both are, but sometimes it’s just too hard. 

Ianto quickly takes the boy’s blood pressure, checking under his eyelids and listening to his heartbeat.

“Clothes are modern enough,” Gwen states, looking over the jeans and t-shirt, the beat-up shoes.

Jack is watching Ianto. “‘Modern enough’? What’s that mean?”

“It means they look normal,” Gwen says patiently. “Unless you’re aware of some other species who wear cotton and denim?”

Jack considers this. “Not any who look human,” he says finally. Ianto shakes his head slightly and ponders the boy’s blood pressure.

“He’s not hurt. The landing may have knocked him out.”

Even as Ianto speaks, the boy starts to revive. He opens his eyes and rubs them with his hand. Leaning up on one arm, he looks around him in bewilderment. “What’s going on?”

“Lie back.” Ianto pushes him back onto the exam table. “Your blood pressure’s pretty low.”

“What’s your name?” Jack asks him.

The boy frowns and blinks. He looks about twelve years old, with unruly brown hair and brown eyes. There are freckles scattered across his nose. Looking at the adults standing around him, he searches each face, looking confused. “Am - am I in trouble?”

“Why would you think you’re in trouble?” Jack counters.

“Why are you asking my name?”

“You’re somewhere you shouldn’t be,” Ianto says. “We’d just like to know how you got here.” 

The boy looks more confused than before. “What?”

“You didn’t use the door to come in,” Gwen says lightly. “We’d like to know how you managed it.”

“I was at Torchwood,” the boy says, his voice rising at the end to make it a question. “Where are we?”

“Torchwood,” Jack says flatly.

 

“I don’t know any of you. This isn’t Torchwood. Let me go!”

Jack leans forward. “What’s your name, kid?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything. I demand you call the authorities.”

“I _am_ the authority. Which Torchwood were you in?”

“What do you mean, ‘which one’? There’s just the one.”

“Right - and we’re it.”

The boy shakes his head. “You’re not,” he says firmly.

“There was a flash of light before you arrived here,” Jack continues. “Did you do that? Did you bring yourself here?”

“Did you come through the Rift?” Ianto asks.

“That wasn’t the Rift,” Gwen says. “It was something else. How did you manage it?” 

“Manage what? I don’t even know where we are.”

“This is Torchwood,” Gwen tells him. “Just as he said. My name’s Gwen. This is Jack and that’s Ianto.”

The boy sits up all the way on the table. His skin is so pale the freckles on his face stand out. He looks like he’s going to be sick. 

“Where are we again?” he asks.

“Cardiff,” Ianto answers. “Wales.”

“And, and this is a Torchwood?”

“This is Torchwood, period,” Jack says, looking at him closely. “Are you going to quit stalling and tell us what you know? For starter’s, what’s your name?”

The boy swallows hard. “Could I have something to drink?”

 

Seated around the conference table, they drink tea and quiz the boy. He is not cooperating and won’t give them any information.

“You’re here now,” Jack says, barely keeping his patience intact. “Somehow you harnessed enough energy to come here. How did you do it? Where did you come from?”

“I already told you. I was at Torchwood.”

“And we’ve told you before - this is Torchwood. This is the only Torchwood left.”

The boy finishes his tea and licks his lips. He looks around thoughtfully and seems to brace himself. “You’re the only Torchwood on this world.”

“This world.” Ianto repeats the words. “Are you saying you’re from a different world? Aliens with their own Torchwood?”

The boy shakes his head. “I’m not an alien.”

A memory floats up to the surface of Jack’s mind. A small room filled with deadly radiation at the end of the world. A harsh red light and a man standing on the other side of a door. A young woman, laughing up at him.

“You’re human like us,” Jack states, although he hasn’t been as strictly human as the others in quite some time. “You’re from Earth.”

“Of course I’m from Earth.”

“You’re just not from this Earth,” Jack continues without missing a beat. “There are worlds parallel to us out there, and you and your Torchwood belong to one of them.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched, Jack,” Ianto says.

“Is it? Tell me your name, kid.”

There is a moment of silence, with Jack and the boy playing a staring contest and Gwen and Ianto looking thoroughly perplexed.

“Parallel worlds,” Gwen says. She’s heard that before, somewhere. “Is that where you came from?”

“Why did you come here?” Ianto asks. “Another world or not, what brought you here to us?”

“Nothing brought me here!” the boys says indignantly. “I mean, something did, because I’m here, but I didn’t do it.”

Jack leans forwards, rests his arms on the table. “What do you know about that beam of light?”

The boy can only shake his head. “I was at Torchwood.”

“The Torchwood on your planet,” Jack says, just so they’re clear.

“Is there another?” The boy is clearly stalling for time now.

“Yes, there’s us, right here. Are we going to go round and round on that or can you accept the fact that you’re here with us and move on?”

The boy scowls but shrugs an agreement. “I was with my dad. At Torchwood. On Earth,” he adds with enough sarcasm to leave no doubt what he thinks of Jack so far.

“And what happened?” Gwen asks. “Was there an attack? An accident or something?”

“No. I went to one of the...one of the labs. They’ve been working on a... thing. Nothing top secret or anything.”

“What was it called?” Gwen asks urgently.

The boy is silent.

Jack sighs loudly. “Look kid, you can play evasive all you want, but the more you tell us, the more likely we can figure this out and send you on your way.”

The boy seems to consider this. “It’s called a beacon,” he says finally. 

“Did the beacon activate somehow? Did you touch it?”

“No. I don’t know what it does. I walked away ‘cause it was pretty boring. I don’t know anything else about it. There was a table in the same lab, a table with a black box on it. I didn’t touch it. But when I got close it exploded. Or something. And then I got here.”

“And your dad?” Ianto asks him. “Where is he?”

A troubled look crosses the boy’s face. “I don’t know. He wasn’t there when it happened.”

“Last time it was a dimension cannon and dimension jumpers,” Jack says to Gwen and Ianto. “They were strong enough to bring people from the other world over to this one.” 

“Could this be something similar?” Gwen is appalled at the mere suggestion. Not because of the technology, but simply because of the memory of what happened the last time people crossed parallel worlds to come to this one and what happened afterwards.

“No telling what that Torchwood’s gotten up to.”

“But why did it bring him here?” Gwen asks. “From Torchwood to Torchwood, one world to another.”

“It could just be a coincidence,” Ianto suggests.

“Seems pretty unlikely for a coincidence,” Gwen disagrees. “But to attempt to open up the dimensions - why would they be doing that?”

“It’s got to be a mistake, a malfunction or something,” Jack says. “How the hell did you manage it, kid?”

“You can’t seriously think this child is from another dimension or universe or world,” Ianto protests. 

“Ianto, after everything we’ve seen, you’re questioning this?” Jack asks. “After all that’s happened here?”

“I’m not questioning the existence of things, Jack. But this child engineering it is a bit far-fetched.” 

“Jack?” Gwen says. “What do you think?”

Jack looks at the boy. “I think someone will be looking for you.”

 

Six hours later the Hub is busy. Gwen, Ianto and Jack are taking readings on Rift activity, quizzing the boy on everything he can remember about the device.

Martha Jones arrives in the midst of all this, breezing into the Hub and looking startled to find a young boy the center of so much commotion.

“Hello!” she says. “I was just on my way through back to London!” She’s taken aback by the lack of response. “What’s going on?” she asks. “Is this a new recruit?” 

Jack gives her a quick kiss of greeting. “Good to see you again, Dr. Jones. What’s the occasion?”

Martha looks puzzled. “Occasion for what?”

“For stopping by on your way through back to London.”

“Jack, are you feeling okay? I got a message to get here as soon as I could! I was coming home from holiday.”

“A message? From who?”

“Well, I don’t know! I sent Tom on ahead home. I’m due back at the hospital tomorrow, Jack. If this is your idea of a cute joke, I don’t have time for it.” 

“Martha, wait.” Jack grabs her arm and helps her out of her coat. “We didn’t send you any message. I know how you feel about working a normal job. But since you’re here, stay a minute, give us your input?”

“What’s going on?”

Jack quickly fills her in on what’s been happening. Martha nods slowly, accepting the parallel world theory without a pause.

“We’re not sure what’s happening just yet,” Gwen concludes. “Any ideas you have would be appreciated, though.”

Martha hesitates. “I really don’t have a clue,” she confesses. “I haven’t had any dealings with this sort of thing for a long time.”

“You didn’t notice any unusual activity out there?” Jack asks.

Martha smiles wryly. “‘Unusual’ for me is not what it used to be. But no.”

Ianto stands up, claiming Martha’s attention. “I’ve looked him over, but a trained doctor would be helpful in this case. Would you mind?”

“Of course.” She looks at the boy. “I’m Martha. Mind if I take a listen to your heart?”

The boy considers her for a moment and shrugs.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Martha murmurs, and ushers him to an exam table.

“My name’s Martha,” she says again as she puts on a stethoscope. “What’s yours?”

He doesn’t respond. Martha listens to his heartbeat and his breathing.

“Sounds normal enough,” she says lightly. “Is there something wrong with your tongue? Do you know how to talk?” 

“Of course I do.”

“Oh. You didn’t answer me. I assumed you were either being incredibly rude or you weren’t able to talk.”

He frowns.

Martha shines a light into his eyes. “Anyway, like I said, I’m Martha,” she continues, just like they’ve been having a normal conversation all along. “Just got back from a week in the French Alps. My husband and I went on a skiing holiday. Had loads of fun, between the snow and the hot chocolate.” She smiles a bit, but he continues to stare at her.

“What did you say your name was?”

“I need to get home,” he says.

“Where is home?”

Again, he doesn’t answer her. Looking over his shoulder at Gwen and Jack, who are conferring over a computer monitor, he shakes his head.

“Do you know where home is? Where your family is?”

For the first time he looks straight at Martha. He’s only a boy, and he looks uncertain and frightened.

“What is it?” she asks gently.

He starts to speak and then shakes his head. 

Martha finishes her exam and leaves him sitting on the table.

“He looks fine,” she reports to Jack. “No signs of trauma. Perfectly healthy. What’s wrong with him? Why won’t he tell me his name?”

“He won’t tell us anything,” Gwen says. “Just that he was in Torchwood when he was suddenly brought here somehow.”

“If he came from Torchwood - any Torchwood - there are people there who will be looking for him,” Jack states. “His father was there - he’ll notice that his kid is gone.”

“What makes you think that anyone else can cross over or come through and find him?” Martha asks.

Jack holds her gaze for a moment. “Martha Jones, you’ve done some amazing things in your day. You know what’s possible with a bit of faith and a dash of hope.”

Another surprise guest comes knocking. This one gets a look of annoyance from Jack and puzzled interest from Gwen and Ianto.

“I picked up all this strange activity on my scanners,” Mickey Smith tells them, ignoring the lack of a greeting. “Figured this was the place to be.”

“What scanners are those?” Gwen asks. 

Jack looks decidedly ungrateful. “We’ve got a spike of something, yes. There was no need for you to come down and help out, though.”

“You don’t have enough manpower as it is,” Mickey tells him. “Three of you against the Rift? How much longer can you do your job properly that way? How many disasters have been caused because you couldn’t handle it all?”

Jack is almost speechless with rage. “What do you know about my team and how we do things here?”

“I know that it’s long past time you hired some more help to replace-” Mickey doesn’t get to finish his sentence. Ianto hits him in the back of the knees with a chair.

“You look tired,” Ianto says shortly. “Have a seat.”

Jack starts towards Mickey. Gwen stops him with a hand on his chest. 

“You don’t get to make comments about my team, Mickey Smith,” Jack tells him. 

Mickey sits down slowly. “Something is happening, Captain, and we don’t want to be caught by surprise.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Gwen asks.

“And where did you come down from again?” Ianto asks suspiciously.

Mickey rolls his eyes. “You know I’m not gonna say.”

Jack manages to stop himself from giving a rude reply. Whatever Mickey Smith has been doing since landing back on this world, it’s secretive and mysterious. It is also, for the most part, far away from Cardiff and Torchwood, so he doesn’t press. 

As long as he keeps his comments about Torchwood to himself, he can stay.

For a while.

“So what’s going on?” Mickey asks.

“You mean you don’t know?” Sometimes Jack just can’t help himself. To be nice to Mickey Smith now would just be a shame.

“I know something’s going on,” Mickey retorts. “Something big. That’s why I contacted Dr. Jones to meet me here.”

Martha stalks over to him. “You contacted- how did you get my number?” she demands. “How were you able to even find me?”

“I have my resources. We-”

“I was skiing with my husband! I can’t believe you sent me a message to come here! I can’t believe I did it! You are a -”

Ianto clears his throat and gestures to the boy. “We’ve a guest.”

Mickey turns around. “So? Who-”

There is no warning. No Rift settings going off, no loud noises. A beam of light appears in the middle of the room, startling them all. The light recedes, and out of the column of fading energy emerges a man. He wears dark jeans and boots, a black jacket over a white shirt. A black gun is strapped across his chest and braced against his hip. His face is grim.

The assembled Torchwood crew and guests momentarily stunned. Finally Jack starts to move.

“Stay back!” the man snaps. He holds them off with his hand as his gaze sweeps the room. 

A tense silence lasts for several seconds. Martha takes a slow step forward.

“Stay back!” he repeats.

Another beam of light, another figure. A woman, dressed in jeans and a red jacket, holding a gun in both hands. Her partner exhales loudly.

“Where were you?” he demands angrily. “Stop off to buy a pair of shoes?”

The woman is scanning the assembled group, a look of tension and on her face. “There you are.” She looks relieved.

The boy had been standing beside Gwen. Now he’s watching the newcomers with cautious eyes.

“It’s okay,” the woman tells him. “Everything’s okay now. We’ve come to take you home.”

His face breaks out in a grin. “I knew you’d come get me.” He runs to the woman and is swept up in a hug.

His movement breaks the spell, and Jack, Martha, Ianto and Gwen all speak at once.

“Doctor!”

Mickey comes closer. “Rose?”

It is indeed the Doctor and Rose, but it’s the Doctor and Rose who belong to the other, parallel universe. They haven’t seen their Doctor in some time, but this isn’t him. He’s not wearing a brown suit and long brown coat. He has the same face and hair, but the look on his face is still dark and deadly serious. 

Rose’s hair is much longer than Jack remembers it ever being. She looks impossibly young and impossibly pretty. He smiles at her and she smiles back, a happy, sunny smile just like she used to give to him.

“We’ve come for my brother,” Rose says. “He was caught up in a trans-dimensional time warp.”

Mickey blinks. “Is this Tony? Little Tony?”

“He was in the wrong place at the right time,” Rose continues. “Something swept through Torchwood.”

“Freak accident,” the Doctor adds. “Luckily we were able to follow him.” He looks around at his surroundings. “To here, of all places.”

Under the circumstances, Jack decides to overlook this jab at Torchwood. “You gonna stand there pointing your guns at us all day?” he asks.

Rose carefully sets her gun down. The Doctor relaxes his stance. 

“They’re only for show, to be honest.” He nods at them. “Captain. Martha, Mickey. Gwyneth! Hello.”

“It’s Gwen,” Rose corrects him.

He grins. “Sorry. You’re very like her.”

Gwen would love to ask what he’s talking about, but she suspects she won’t get a chance.

“You look fantastic, Rose,” Jack says.

“You, too, Jack,” Rose says. “We’ve missed you.” Her gaze moves to Mickey. “It’s good to see you both again.”

“Says you,” the Doctor murmurs.

“Yes, says me,” she says firmly. “Hold on, Tony. We’re going home.”

“Lovely to see you all,” the Doctor says to the room in general. “Our love to the family.” He picks up Rose’s gun. “Rose?”

“Ready.”

There is no warning. One moment they are there, standing together, the next they have disappeared.

Mickey rubs his jaw. Jack stares fixedly at the spot where Rose and the Doctor had just been standing.

Ianto is standing with his hands in his pockets. “Interesting day,” he remarks.

“That’s one word for it,” Martha says.

Jack comes to his senses and glances around at them, looking annoyed. “Didn’t the Doctor once say that travel between parallel worlds is impossible?”

 

Tony Tyler appears in the Hub three weeks later, emerging from the same beam of light as before.

A sharp crack of sound sets off the alarms, and the familiar figure lands on the floor, thrown out of a column of energy.

_“Again?”_ Jack asks in disbelief. It’s bad enough that Martha has left Cardiff for London and Mickey refuses to leave Cardiff, but now the cause of Mickey’s extended stay has just popped in for a visit.

Tony sits up. “Hey.”

He didn’t know what had happened. One moment he’d been at football practice, the next he was there at Torchwood. He’s still wearing his school jersey.

“I wasn’t near Torchwood or anything,” he complains. “I was about to kick the ball and now I’m here.”

“This is not right,” Gwen murmurs.

“You’re telling me,” Jack agrees.

“How old are you?” Mickey demands, staring hard at the boy.

“Thirteen.”

“Thirteen - you can’t be thirteen. You were just a baby when I left.”

“Time moves differently back home.” The boy is obviously repeating something he’s been told many times before but he manages to say it like he’s a leading expert on the matter.

“How?” Ianto asks, almost involuntarily. 

“How what?”

“How does time move?”

“It just does. It moves. It’s moving at a different speed than the time on your world. Sometimes it’s ahead and then sometimes it slows down for a while.”

“And what do you know about how time moves?” Gwen asks, amused.

He doesn’t smile back at her. “Enough.”

He doesn’t ask how old Mickey thinks he should be, doesn’t try to figure out how much time may have passed since Mickey left to return to this world. Even though they know his identity, he doesn’t volunteer much.

This is a boy who knows his way around Torchwood, Jack thinks to himself. Whatever he’s been taught or seen, he knows enough not to talk about it unnecessarily. 

Jack’s just not sure if that’s good or bad.

“You’re Rose Tyler’s brother, then,” Ianto states, just so they’re all clear. “She came and got you last time. Does she know to come now?”

“I don’t know. She wasn’t at my practice.”

“Does she work for Torchwood? For your Torchwood?”

Tony looks at Mickey. “You’re Mickey Smith.”

“That’s right. Do you remember me?”

“No. But my mum has pictures of you at home. She said you went back to the parallel world. Is that where we are?”

“This is the world we were born on. Me, your mum and your sister. The world you and your dad were born on is parallel to this one. I came back home.”

The boy nods. “Mum stayed with dad and me.”

“What about Rose?” Jack asks, because he has to know. “Did she stay?” Obviously, she stayed, along with the other Doctor, but Jack needs to know for certain that she’s happy and all right. Ever since he learned that she was trapped on a parallel world, he’s worried and wondered about her the way an older brother would worry about his sister. The last time they were together left no opportunities to talk.

Tony is silent, measuring his words. Jack can’t help but be impressed with his caution. Some kids would be talking their heads off about everything they knew. Not this one.

“She stayed with us,” Tony says finally, having decided nothing bad could happen with that information. He fidgets in his seat. “Do you have anything to eat?”

Four hours later a beam of light opens up and two figures appear.

“Bloody hell! Torchwood again!”

“Tony?” Rose calls out.

“Rose!” Tony hurries over to her.

_“What_ is going on?” Jack demands. “Don’t you dare fly away until you’ve answered me,” he warns the Doctor, who is watching him in amusement.

“Oh, we wouldn’t dream of it,” the Doctor assures him with a smirk.

“We don’t know what’s going on,” Rose says, sweeping hair out of her eyes. “He just disappeared from the field.”

“And he reappeared here, apparently,” the Doctor finishes. “Again.” He looks around. “You lot working on anything that could pull someone across dimensional space?”

“Hardly.”

The Doctor eyes Jack narrowly.

Jack raises an eyebrow in response. “Don’t tell me you don’t believe me.”

“No, I believe you. Torchwood’s not competent enough for something of that order. Not for a successful completion of it, anyway. Nice to see you again. Ready, Rose?”

“Yes.”

“Wait!” Jack yells.

“Bye!” Rose and the Doctor call out together.

Tony waves.

A flash of light, and they’re gone.

“Those are the people you traveled around with?” Gwen asks Jack.

Jack shakes his head. “You had to be there to believe it.”

 

Two weeks later it happens again. Tony appears, holding an apple and looking absolutely bewildered.

“Dad?” he calls.

Gwen drops her lunch in surprise. “Tony!”

“I was having lunch with my dad. Just lunch! And now I’m here.”

“This is insane,” Jack says in exasperation.

Another flash of light comes eight hours later.

Rose is there, covered in blood.

“Tony?” she demands.

“He’s here, Rose,” Jack says. “Are you okay? What’s happened?” Mickey is already moving towards her with a medical kit.

Rose can hardly breathe. “Tony was with my dad. He disappeared. We tracked him to...a different place, a different world. Then he disappeared again. I followed him here. Please, don’t.” She pushes Mickey away. “Is he here?” she demands wildly. “Where is he?”

“Tony’s right here, Rose,” Jack says, gesturing to the boy. He takes hold of her arms and tries to steady her.

“Tony.” Rose smiles faintly. “Not him. Where-” She breaks off as a stream of energy blazes beside her.

When it fades the Doctor collapses at her feet.

“No!” Rose drops to her knees. It is clear that the blood covering her belongs to him.

“Ow,” he murmurs. “Is he here?”

“Yeah.” Rose takes cloths from Mickey and wipes blood away from his face. Her hair covers her face as she leans over him.

“Scalp wound,” Ianto says. “It’ll bleed a lot, but it’s not serious.”

“Oh, Mr. Jones,” the Doctor mutters. “I’ll show you what’s not serious.” He braces himself up on one elbow and reaches up to feel his head. He wears a silver wedding band on his left hand. 

Rose pushes his hand away to check for herself. She wears a smaller, identical silver ring on her left hand.

“What happened?” Jack asks, kneeling down beside them.

“Tony went someplace else first. I don’t know where. We followed him, and the Doctor landed, I don’t know, wrong. He forced me to move on ahead of him.” Rose holds bandages in place against the bleeding as Ianto wipes the wound clean.

“Easy! We had to find the boy. And now we’ve got to leave. We can’t stay any longer than necessary.”

“Let me sew you up,” Ianto says.

“Leave it. I’ll be fine. Let’s go, Rose, while we still can.” The Doctor makes his way to his feet, swaying slightly but remaining upright. Rose slips her arm around his waist, keeping him steady. For a brief second he turns his face into her hair and she squeezes her eyes shut, resting her cheek against his shoulder.

“Ready?” he asks her.

“Take my hand,” Rose tells her brother.

“Mum is so gonna kill you this time,” Tony says.

“I’ve no doubt about that,” the Doctor agrees.

 

Jack rebuilt Torchwood by himself. He recruited Gwen and Ianto, and Owen and Tosh and Suzie. He’s saved the world a few times, the universe more than once. He’s proud of what he’s done.

So why can’t he get rid of one annoying human? 

“Things are quiet here. Feel free to take off whenever you want.” Jack may have helped save the universe with Mickey, but he’s drawing the line at having him in the Hub. 

“We don’t know what’s causing those disruptions. I’m staying.”

“I’m ordering you to leave.”

“My orders are to stay until this is resolved.”

“Your orders - orders from who?”

“Can’t say, not gonna tell you.” Mickey moves to his computer as he sees something on the screen. “I’m here for the long haul, Captain.”

“Over my dead -”

“Readings are all over the place,” Mickey interrupts. “Rift spiking...decreasing...spiking...decreasing...”

“Got it, thanks.” Jack stares at the monitor over Mickey’s shoulder. 

“What’s going on? Doesn’t look like normal activity.”

“I think...something strange is going on.”

“That your expert opinion?”

“Shut up.” Jack shouts over his shoulder. “Gwen! Some activity we need to take a look at. Have Ianto get the car.”

“No need, Jack, “ Gwen says calmly. “It’s for you.”

“What?”

She shows him the CCTV monitor. The camera is trained on a spot outside the Hub. A police box is standing there, parked on the Rift.

“I got pulled out of space to right here,” the Doctor says, sounding pretty annoyed about it. “What have you lot been messing with, Captain?” 

“We’ve not been messing with anything, Doctor. We’ve been tracking this for a while. Good to see you, by the way.”

“And you,” the Doctor says briefly. “What is it?”

“We have some theories,” Mickey begins.

“And? Theorize freely.” The Doctor puts on his glasses. “Show me.”

“It’s...unusual,” Jack says. 

“Unusual enough to bring Mr. Smith by to help out?”

“Wait - do you know who he’s working for?”

“Not you, obviously.”

“Here are the readouts for the last few occurrences,” Gwen says hastily.

The Doctor scans them quickly. “Nothing here, is there? Nothing to indicate what would pull my ship out of time and space.”

“We have video footage,” Gwen continues. “This is what our internal cameras recorded,” she says, loading the first disk. “That was the first time.”

“First time?” the Doctor repeats.

“You’ll see.” Gwen engages the play function.

They all watch silently. The Doctor has a look of intense concentration on his face. 

“Who is the boy?” he asks when the recording ends.

Jack, Gwen, and Ianto all turn to Mickey. He shakes his head frantically. They others indicate, silently, that he’s the one to break the news.

Mickey glares at them all. _Why me?_ he pantomimes. _You should do it._ He’s pointing to Jack, who shakes his head. _No way,_ Jack mouths. They turn from this interaction to find the Doctor watching them patiently. 

“Is this not a good time?” he asks politely. “Perhaps I could just come back the next time the Rift opens up and deposits a child in your midst.”

Mickey takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders.

“The boy is Tony Tyler.”

The Doctor’s eyebrows go up. “Tony Tyler? I’ve heard that name before. Hang on. Tony Tyler. Tony...Tyler. Jackie’s son? From the parallel world?”

“The same, boss,” Mickey confirms, squirming uncomfortably. He knows what is coming.

“And that’s it? Where is he now? What happened? The walls between the universes should never have opened!”

“‘Should’ never have opened?” Jack asks swiftly. “Or ‘could’ never have opened?”

The Doctor turns to him in a fury, ready to demand just what Jack means by that, but Gwen breaks in. “There’s more,” she says quietly, and continues the disk.

On the monitor an energy beams opens up and reveals the other Doctor.

This world’s Doctor watches impassively for a few seconds before realization hits. His face darkens as he takes in his double, holding a gun on the Torchwood team. He shakes his head slightly in disbelief, almost not understanding what he’s seeing.

“When was this?” he asks tightly.

Gwen starts to answer, but then Rose appears on the screen.

The Doctor’s breath quickens and then goes back to normal. He watches as the pair take Tony and disappear.

“It happened again,” Gwen says. “And again.”

“Show me.”

Together they watch Tony appear in the Hub, holding an apple. Then they watch a bloody Rose appear, watch her Doctor fall at her feet.

“This is...not good,” the Doctor says after they’ve disappeared with Tony. “This is very, very bad.” 

“Any ideas?” Jack asks.

“Not a clue at the moment, unfortunately. Is there a pattern to these?”

“Completely random, as far as we can tell.”

The Doctor considers this. “When was the last time?”

“Five weeks ago,” Gwen says.

“Right.” The Doctor runs his hand through his hair. “Right. If they break through again-”

A crack of sound is heard from below.

“Downstairs,” Mickey says, and quickly activates the monitors.

“Keep watch, Mickey,” Jack says, and heads for the door. “You were saying, Doctor?”

Tony is already there. “Blimey, I’m gettin’ tired of this.”

 

“So you’re Tony Tyler.” The Doctor is delighted to meet him.

Tony is staring at him with an incredibly fixed expression. “You look just like him,” he keeps saying.

“Yes, well, there’s a reason for that.”

“You look _just_ like him.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Okay,” Mickey says briskly. “Took Rose six hours the first time. Second time it took four. Last time it was eight. Average of six hours of wait time.”

It’s nearly twenty hours before two people appear in the Hub in a flash of light.

The Hub is deserted.

“Hello!” Rose calls out. She’s dressed in dark green cargo pants, the pockets bulging. Her black jacket is shorter than the white t-shirt she wears underneath it. She’s wearing plain white trainers that are wet and muddy. Her blond hair is in a ponytail that hangs down almost to her waist. Her face is smeared in drying mud.

“Torchwood,” her companion says with great loathing. _“Again.”_

“It’s better than that dark wet alley you landed us in before.” 

“All you do is complain about my driving.”

“Learn to work the dimension manipulator and I’ll stop.”

He’s been slowly circling the room, searching for signs of life. Now he stops and looks back at her. “Stop nagging.”

He’s wearing dark trousers and boots and a long-sleeved blue t-shirt over a white t-shirt. A slice of white fabric hangs out below the hem of the blue shirt, which is wet and muddy. His trousers are filthy, as though he’s recently fallen into a mud puddle and been dragged backwards through it.

“I’m not nagging,” Rose denies.

“Oh, you are so nagging.”

“Those new trousers make your bum look big,” she says pleasantly, moving to the door.

“You’re lucky I can rise above comments like that.” He wrenches the door open, makes her wait while he scans the hallway.

“There’s no one here, Rose.”

“Can’t be. Where’s Tony?”

“I don’t know. Yet.”

“Hello?” The voice comes from behind them.

He forces Rose out of the way and swings around. Behind him Rose raises a large black gun.

“Oi!” The man’s arms fly into the air. “It’s me! I’m Rhys. I’m looking for Gwen.”

“Oh. Yes. Come on out, Rose.” 

She’s already there, setting her gun down.

“I’m sorry,” Rhys says carefully, “but who are you?”

“Oh, sorry! Doctor John Tyler-Smith. Hello.” He shakes Rhys’ hand enthusiastically. “And my wife, Rose.”

“Hello,” Rose says with a small wave of her hand.

“Er...hello.” Rhys pauses. “I’m looking for Gwen Cooper,” he says again.

“Us, too,” says Doctor John Tyler-Smith. “Well, not Gwen, but Torchwood personnel in general. Captain Harkness in particular.”

“You don’t know where they may have gone to?” Rose asks.

“Gwen’s not answering her phone. I can’t reach anyone.”

“That’s not a good sign,” the Doctor murmurs. Rose frowns and looks back at him.

“Right,” he says decisively. “Rhys, lovely to meet you. We need to be off.”

“What? No!” 

He continues talking over Rose’s protests. “We’ve some fine-tuning to do. If they get back and they have a young boy with them, tell them to hold on to him. Well, as best as they can.”

“We can’t just _leave_ him!”

He reaches out and runs his hand down Rose’s ponytail. He stops his hand at her waist. “We don’t know that he’s here, Rose. We’ve been led astray before.”

“I am not leaving without him,” she says. “There is no way that’s happening.”

“Rose...”

Rhys coughs. Having forgotten that he was there, the Doctor and Rose both start in surprise.

Rhys lifts a finger and points behind them. 

Turning, they see Tony standing there.

Rose laughs in relief. “Hello. Come on.”

Tony shakes his head. “We can’t leave yet.”

 

Four hours earlier 

Mickey has fitted Tony with a tracking device. There’s no guarantee that it will work, but it’s a good try. 

Tony’s still not talking, a trait that’s not endearing him to Torchwood.

The Doctor seems to approve of Tony’s reticence. “Events have been radically changed by something like this,” he says. “The less we know the better.” He then proceeds to ignore his own claims by drilling Tony with questions that a young boy couldn’t possibly answer.

“Were you recently exposed to any atomic energy?” the Doctor is asking when Gwen calls out from her desk.

“Downstairs, Jack! Something may be coming through.”

“Stay on it,” Jack orders.

“Here.” The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to give the tracker a bit more power. “This should help you follow the signal, even if it’s farther out of range,” he says. 

“What if I get beamed back home?” Tony wants to know. “Can you follow a signal that far?”

Jack manages not to roll his eyes at the question. “If you get beamed back home we’ll assume you’re fine.”

“Just assume? What if something bad happens on the way?”

“It hasn’t so far, has it?”

Tony looks annoyed. “Rose’s stories about you always made you seem cooler than this.”

“Your sister had an inexplicable fondness for the Captain,” the Doctor says. “It was hard to make her see reason, believe me.”

“Rose told you stories about me?” Jack’s not sure whether to be pleased or worried.

“A few.”

Mickey snorts. “I’d love to know what she had to say about you.”

Tony looks at Mickey. “She told me stories about you, too.”

This wipes the smirk off of Mickey’s face. “She did?”

“Those I would pay to hear,” Jack remarks. 

“She probably left out all the good -” Tony’s sentence goes unfinished as he suddenly vanishes.

They track him down to a lower level, and they pull up short.

“Rose is here,” Tony says unnecessarily.

“Are you planning a longer stay this time?” Jack can’t help asking.

“There’s no time,” Rose says, apology in her voice as she looks at him. She is careful not to look at the Doctor or anyone else. “We need to leave.”

“You can’t, Rose. You need to tell us what’s going on.”

There is a world of sorrow in her eyes. “This isn’t the right time, Jack. I need to get him home.”

“But, Rose- ” Tony begins.

They disappear.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack pores over the CCTV footage from Rose’s last visit. “This doesn’t make sense. When Rhys arrived we were here in the Hub. We were all here, and they’re saying the Hub is empty.”

The Doctor points at the screen. “And then Tony is yanked from here to where they were standing, a few levels below.”

Jack peers at the screen. Rhys, Rose, and the other Doctor. Rhys points behind them, and Rose and the other Doctor turn around to see Tony standing there. Rose’s brief words to Jack are unheard because the volume is turned down. Silently she takes her brother’s hand, and the three of them vanish.

“This is too bizarre,” Jack says finally. What he’s not saying is that it’s even more bizarre to have seen the Doctor and Rose in the same space after all this time. She didn’t look at anyone but Jack. Jack suspects she didn’t want to get caught up in the Doctor just then.

“Something is affecting the time stream,” the Doctor says. “The time stamps on these videos don’t match up. See? The time here, when Rose and...he...come into the Hub is several hours from now - it hasn’t even happened yet. But then we arrive almost immediately, at the proper time for us.”

“I worked at the Time Agency for a long time, and I don’t remember anything like this.”

“No, you wouldn’t have encountered it. Parallel worlds never match up exactly, and with the time streams off as they are, it’s worse than normal. Whatever it is, we need to close the breach before this gets any worse.”

“Speaking of getting worse.” Jack nods in the direction of the cameras.

The Doctor rubs his eyes. “This is becoming absurd.”

 

 

“What can you tell us about your world’s Torchwood?” the Doctor asks Tony. “Have they run any tests on you?”

“Lots of them. No one can figure out what’s dragging me here.”

“Is anyone there working on space travel? On a dimension cannon?”

Tony frowns at this. “That’s something they did a long time ago, I think. Rose asked them to create it. It doesn’t work anymore - not since Rose came back home.”

“The reality bomb destroyed its ability to function,” the Doctor agrees, mostly to himself. “Is there anything else going on? What are the dimension manipulators? We heard them mentioned on the video. Who created those?”

“They’re used to find me when I disappear. Somehow they can bring us back home.”

“Nothing else that you can think of?” Jack asks. 

“I don’t think I know much else. But John was working on a project last year. Something to do with space travel.” Tony glances at the Doctor.

“Who’s John?” Gwen asks, ready to write it all down.

“John, my sister’s husband.” Tony glances over his shoulder at the Doctor again. “The one who looks like you.”

“And it just gets more and more awkward,” Ianto murmurs to himself. 

“So John was working on space travel. Something that might move people across parallel worlds?”

“I don’t know what it was he was doing, but he hasn’t worked on it for a long time.”

“But John never told you what it was?”

“No, he didn’t. He doesn’t usually talk about work with me. And I’m the only one who gets to call him John. He’s called the Doctor.” Here Tony glances over his shoulder again. “Like you.”

“Well, there’s a good reason for that, I suppose,” the Doctor murmurs with a sigh.

“They’re coming for me,” Tony states. “They missed me this time, but they’ll be coming back.” He says this as an incontrovertible fact, something that is so true and obvious there can be no refuting it.

Jack and the Doctor meet gazes over Tony’s head.

“If anyone can make it happen, it’s Rose,” Jack offers quietly.

The Doctor nods. “I know.”

He does know. He knows better than any of them what Rose is capable of when people she cares about are in danger.

“Right, then, Tony Tyler,” he says briskly. “Can you think of anything else for us?”

 

 

“Rose should be here by now,” Tony says quietly.

“Why do you say that?” Gwen asks casually.

“How long have I been here now?” he demands. “Almost ten hours. Something’s happened. Maybe the opening between our worlds has closed and I’m stuck here. Maybe she’s stuck in a different dimension. Maybe she’s-”

“Your sister is fine,” the Doctor interrupts him. “Traveling across time and space is difficult under the best of circumstances. Hours for us can be only moments for the other side. Since you’re coming from a parallel world I’m not sure exactly how time is lining up.”

Tony Tyler is not a boy raised in cotton wool. He’s been around Torchwood his entire life, and has seen what his family is called upon to do on a daily basis.

“She’d be here by now if she could.”

“She will,” the Doctor says firmly. His faith in Rose is unshakeable.

 

 

Tony’s rescuer arrives just as he’s resigned himself to living forever on this world. He’s brave enough to think it will be okay and young enough to be terrified of never seeing his mother again. 

Ianto has ordered in Chinese, and he and Tony are eating their way through a carton of noodles. Gwen has just helped herself to an egg roll when they all see a bright light. The Doctor and Mickey are there almost immediately.

Tony stands up, anticipation running through him. “It’s Rose.”

The woman who appears is young and slight, but she is not Rose. Her hair is short and dark, and she is wearing Torchwood-issue field clothes, black trousers and shirt with a matching cap and gun.

“Oh my goodness,” she says faintly. “It worked.”

Tony blinks. “Riley?”

“Good, you’re here,” the woman says in relief. She knocks her cap off when she reaches up to adjust the gun strapped across her back. “Come on, then, quickly.”

“Riley?”

“Yes,” she says. “Come on, now.”

She has china-doll skin and big blue eyes. Despite himself, Jack steps forward and holds out his hand.

“Captain Jack Harkness. Welcome to Torchwood.” Behind him, Ianto rolls his eyes.

“Hello. Riley Shane. Torchwood.” She spares a glance around the Hub. “Apparently we have a bigger budget back home. Tony?”

“Where’s Rose?”

Riley looks troubled. “We don’t know. She and the Doctor left fifteen hours ago and didn’t come back. Your father sent me to get you. We were afraid to wait too much longer.”

“She hasn’t come back?” the Doctor says sharply. “Where is she?”

Riley jumps at the voice. “Where have you-” She blinks as she takes in the Doctor in his pinstriped suit. “Oh. You’re...the other one.”

The Doctor, understandably, bristles at being labeled the ‘other one’, but her gaze has moved on beyond him.

She blinks again and smiles slowly. “Mickey Smith?”

“The one and only. Hey.”

“Good to see you again. I’m so glad you’re still alive and well.” She looks back at the Doctor. “I’m sorry, I thought you were him,” she explains. Assuming they all know what she means, she adds, “They never made it home. We were expecting them back with Tony. Whatever is pulling him through to this world must be affecting their way back home.”

The Doctor looks grave at this. “You need to take him and go,” he says. “Time is not acting predictably. This breach is going to have disastrous consequences if it’s not put right.”

Tony walks over to Riley. She gets a good grip on his arm and pushes a button on a small handheld computer. They all hear the small piece of machinery give a whine. Then it is silent.

“What happened?” Gwen asks.

Riley curses under her breath. “Once I land the dimension manipulator has three minutes to be reactivated so it can trace its way back. If you wait any longer it shuts down and needs to recharge for twenty minutes. I waited too long.”

“It hasn’t been three minutes since you landed,” Gwen says. “It can’t have been.”

“No,” agrees the Doctor. “It’s not been three minutes. Here.” He strides to her and takes out his sonic screwdriver.

Riley jerks away. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m giving it a jolt.” The Doctor adjusts the setting and runs it over the device she called a dimension manipulator. “There.” The small black box beeps. Instantly, Riley gets hold of Tony and activates it.

“Thanks.”

They disappear.

 

 

Tony is gone, but the effects of his visits live on in the Hub. Despite Jack’s subtle and not-so-subtle hints, Mickey shows no sign of leaving. Every few days he will go away for a day or two or three, and just when Jack thinks he’s gone for good, Mickey will come back again.

The Doctor shows no sign of leaving, either. The frequency of Tony’s appearances worry him greatly. He’s parked the TARDIS on the Rift and spends much of the day examining Torchwood’s computers or heading out to track down possible disturbances. In between he lectures the humans on the finer points of time travel.

“Travel between parallel worlds should not be possible,” he tells them. Jack, Gwen, Ianto and Mickey are all standing around him as he examines the Torchwood computer. “Each time you travel between them, you breach the wall that separates them.”

“Is it a real wall?” Gwen asks. “I mean, an actual wall,” she clarifies, trying not to sound stupid. Obviously, there’s no brick wall floating around keeping universes separate.

Then again, maybe that’s exactly what he means. After all, this is the man that Torchwood was created to stop, and that was over a hundred years ago.

Jack is right, she thinks to herself. Nothing should be surprising her at this point.

“Think of it as a virtual wall,” the Doctor says. “More of an idea than a fact. The last time you came across,” he directs this to Mickey, “you and Jackie and Rose, you caused slight tears in that wall. Not very noticeable, because we were dealing with something much bigger at the time. I thought I’d repaired it all,” he murmurs to himself, examining the spike in activity. “Why is it opening up now? Why is Tony Tyler being pulled across?”

Jack assumes, rightly, that the question is rhetorical. “Just tell me it’s not the end of the world. Again.”

“Not as far as I can tell. Don’t worry.” The Doctor stands up and smiles. “No Daleks in sight, anyway.”

Jack remembers the pull of the transmat beam, yanking him off the TARDIS and onto the Game Station. Being shot by a Dalek only to be brought back to life. Watching what happened in the Crucible, trying to stop the universe’s destruction. Getting shot by a Dalek. Again.

“That is a comfort,” he says.

 

 

A few hours later, the Doctor is in a very bad mood. The Rift is spiking, lights flash intermittently, and the pterodactyl is seriously upset about something.

Gwen tracks similar occurrences across the world, looking for patterns. “The only thing they have in common is that they’re happening,” she reports. “We’re seeing a lot more of it because we’re on the Rift, maybe.”

“There are days I wish I’d never heard of the Rift,” Jack says with a sigh. He and Ianto have been out searching for anything that might have come through the Rift. Nothing’s turned up, so far.

Only Mickey Smith, working almost silently beside the Doctor, suspects what might really be wrong. Rose was here, and then she was gone. And now she may be lost in space somewhere, possibly unable to make it to her home.

Mickey has hated the Doctor and loved him, feared him and admired him. Resented him and envied him. He understands exactly how he feels now. Rose gone for good on her world is one thing. Rose missing forever is something else.

“Is there any way to find her?” he asks quietly. What Rose felt for him died a lifetime ago, and his feelings have changed, too, but he loves her for the girl she used to be.

The Doctor rubs his jaw. “I don’t know,” he admits. “This activity makes no sense to me. There’s no other sign that the fabric between the two worlds is tearing. No indicator of what to look for.”

Mickey nods. “What we need is an arrow that says ‘Look here’.”

The Doctor grins. “That would be helpful,” he agrees.

Later, watching Mickey while he pretends to scan through more data, he thinks how foolish his old self had been, to be so jealous of Mickey. Hating to take Rose home, because Mickey would be waiting for her. Watching them together, monitoring them to make sure their relationship remained casual. Envying them their normal life while thinking he was better than that.

He knew he would win. He’d always known how Rose felt for him. In the end Mickey opted to stay behind and liberate the parallel world from Cybermen, and he’d left in the TARDIS with Rose, happy and content.

Well, that hadn’t lasted, had it? And he had only himself to blame for what happened afterwards. He’d made the right choice, and nothing would ever convince him otherwise. 

But the pain it left was with him still, to come out when he least expected it.

Like now.

“Were you able to track any changes when you were in the time vortex?” Jack’s question breaks him out of his musings.

“I haven’t found anything obvious. Perhaps things are going back to normal.”

Just then a familiar sound is heard. The computers flash. 

The Doctor jumps up. “Get ready,” he says. “No telling what may be coming through.”

By now they know what to expect. It’s almost a familiar routine. The monitors show a spike of some unknown energy. A sharp crack, and a beam of light.

Out of the light stumbles Tony Tyler. When he looks around and realizes where he is, he looks like he might cry.

“I don’t want this! I want to go home.”

Gwen moves to him, sympathetic, but he shoulders his way past her. Standing with his back to them, he says, “No one at home knows what’s happening. They can’t control it. They can’t keep me in one place. All I want to do is have my life back.”

“We’ll help you,” Gwen says. “We can fix this thing.”

Tony snorts. “No offense, but my dad runs Torchwood back home. It’s about a million times bigger than this place. If they can’t work it out, how can you?” At the last moment he seems to realize this might be an offensive thing to say. “But I’m sure you’ll all try,” he finishes lamely.

Jack lets that go for now. “You made it home? Safely?”

“Yeah, we did. The dimension manipulators are still working.”

“And Rose?” Jack asks. “Did she make it home all right?”

“Yeah.” Tony is more subdued now. Something happened that he doesn’t want to talk about. “She came home okay.”

There is another sharp sound, and they all look wildly around. Nothing else happens, but they all move to their respective computers.

“Rift activity increasing nearby,” Ianto reports.

“More activity south of here,” Gwen states.

“We have some unknown energy showing up here and right outside the Hub,” Jack says. He glances at Tony. “Looks like whatever brought you here is acting up again.”

The Doctor stands beside Jack, gazing thoughtfully at the computer monitor. “Whatever this thing is,” he says, “it’s widening. We only saw it when someone arrived or departed. Now it’s an independent occurrence.”

“It’s expanding its range,” Jack says. “What for? What does it want?”

“You think it’s an alien doing this?” Mickey asks. The idea has clearly not occurred to him before.

“An alien would have a reason to do this,” the Doctor disagrees. “Moving people back and forth through dimensions and worlds, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“None of this is making sense,” Tony complains.

“All we need is to figure out a cause,” Gwen begins, and is cut off by a screech.

The Doctor looks up and puts on his glasses. “Good heavens.”

“You’ve fed her lately, right, Ianto?” Gwen asks urgently.

“Yes, I’ve fed her recently!”

The pterodactyl gives another shriek, and then flies away.

“You have a dinosaur here,” Tony states in wonder. 

“She’s a pterodactyl,” Ianto says. “I call her Myfanwy.” 

“Muvanwee?”

“Myfanwy,” Ianto corrects him. “It means ‘beloved’ in Welsh.”

“Doctor!” Jack and Mickey exclaim in unison.

A bright light has surrounded Tony. Seeing their horrified expressions, he turns around. Mickey jumps to grab him, but the boy disappears. The column of light closes up as if it was never there.

“What just happened?” Gwen cries.

“The breach is becoming stronger,” the Doctor says briskly. “We need to get out there and investigate. Find out what’s causing this and put a stop to it before this world, and possibly others, are destroyed. There is only so much activity that space can take before it rips apart.”

“Lovely thought,” Ianto murmurs to Gwen.

“Jack! Gather all the activity for the past three hours. We’ll track it all down, look for traces of energy that might tell us where to go.” The Doctor grabs his coat from a chair and pulls it on. “I’m going to try and follow Tony in the TARDIS. I may be able to pick up an energy reading from him.”

“What if he’s left this universe?” Gwen demands. “Can you follow him into the other one?”

The Doctor hesitates. “I’ve done it before.”

“By accident!” Mickey reminds him. “I’m coming with you.”

Before the Doctor can agree or disagree, Tony shoots out of a beam of light and lands at their feet.

“Whoa! Are you okay?” Mickey helps him to his feet.

Tony looks around, bewildered. “I was here, then I was home. And then I got dragged back.”

“How long were you there?” the Doctor asks, watching him closely.

“At home?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know, not too long. A couple of days, maybe.”

“Days?” Gwen repeats. “You were here not five minutes ago.”

“Time is different over there,” Mickey reminds her. 

“I only left five minutes ago?” Tony sounds appalled. “Time travel isn’t as cool as I thought.”

Jack and the Doctor exchange a look. 

“Let’s hit these spots,” Jack says briskly. “We’ll meet back here and figure out the next step. Tony, you come with me. The last place you need to be right now is in a time machine.”

Before they can leave the Hub the pterodactyl screams again. Bracing themselves, everyone watches as a seam of light opens up in the air before them. Tony is moving forward before the light disappears. 

“John!”

It is the other Doctor, the one who lives with Rose in that parallel world. He’s wearing civilian clothing - there was obviously no time to change into the field clothes that Torchwood agents prefer to travel in. His hands are scratched and his face and neck are bleeding from several small wounds.

This Doctor knows what he’s facing and he knows who is waiting for him in the Hub. He searches out Jack first, then the Doctor, to make sure they are listening.

“There is a breach between these worlds,” he says without preamble. “Somehow it’s pulling Tony back and forth. If we don’t get it closed it’ll happen again and again and it will threaten the stability of both our worlds.”

“You’ve come to help us?” Gwen asks tentatively.

“It’s our only chance,” he tells her. “Whatever is causing this, we need to heal the breach and set things back to normal.”

“Do you know what’s causing it?” Jack asks.

He hesitates. “No. We don’t. But we know it will be dangerous to get near and more dangerous to repair.”

“Perfect,” the Doctor says. “We can get started, then.”

 

Was there ever a more bizarre situation? Mickey Smith asks himself. The Doctor and himself, that was a bit awkward, what with both of them loving Rose before and not getting to have her. They’ve gotten over that and now Mickey considers the Doctor a friend. 

But this other Doctor, identical in looks and speech but clearly his own man, is something else altogether. He’s even called the Doctor on his world, although Tony refers to him as John.

“If we can locate the breach on this side, we can seal it up and prevent any more traveling through,” the other Doctor is explaining. “Once the opening is closed, it should prevent movement across.”

“Are you sure that will work?” Jack asks.

“It’s the best bet we have. We’ve run programs. This is our best option.”

They all look at the Doctor. He’s been staring at his counterpart with a slight frown on his face. Now he sees their eyes upon him and nods. “We need to seal off the walls. There’s been far too much traveling across in the past. It may be what’s caused the weakening.”

“Doesn’t explain why Tony is pulled through back and forth, though,” Gwen counters.

“One thing at a time. Unless?” He looks at the other Doctor.

The other Doctor shakes his head. “We don’t know why it’s happening. All we can do is close it all up.”

“Where’s Rose?” Tony says, asking the question on everyone’s mind.

His brother-in-law smiles at him. “She’s fine. Unharmed and unhurt.”

“But where is she?”

“She’s home. I’ll do this on my own. It’s dangerous enough.”

“Did she decide that?”

“Of course not, I did. You know how she gets. We’ll patch up this breach, put things to rights, and head right home.”

By an unspoken agreement, the two Doctors separate. Mickey sticks with what he’s thinking of as his Doctor, scanning the information from the Torchwood computers and looking for any new patterns.

Jack shows the other Doctor the data they’ve accumulated so far. They try to match it up with the data from the parallel world’s disturbances, looking for similarities.

Tony sticks close to his sister’s husband, close enough that he bumps into him several times. Each time he trips over Tony, he shifts his weight and continues working. He knows the young boy is shadowing him but is not bothered by it. Although the fifth time it happens, he regains his balance and stares at Tony in exasperation.

“I’m not going anywhere, honest,” he says firmly. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Tony agrees, and then wedges in between Jack and the Doctor. The Doctor sighs and ruffles his hair before turning back to the computer.

Tony follows them as closely as he can, and turns around when he hears a whooshing sound. “What was that?”

“The TARDIS,” Jack says briefly.

“The...” Tony looks at Rose’s husband. That Doctor shakes his head briefly.

“He’ll be going into the time vortex to look for activity. When he gets back we’ll have a better idea of what we’re facing.”

Gwen is impressed. “He didn’t mention any of that.”

“No. That’s what I would do.”

Jack is considering this Doctor closely. “Amazing.”

The Doctor rolls his eyes. “Yes, yes, yes. We’re very alike, aren’t we? But at the moment I’m facing the destruction of the world - again - so could we keep this rolling, please?”

“Do we call you Doctor?” Gwen asks, ignoring his request. “Seems a bit strange to have two of you.”

Jack raises an eyebrow at that image. Before he can elaborate on that, Ianto disagrees.

“It’s just like having a pair of twins around,” he says.

Jack’s eyebrows both go up.

“Grow up, Captain,” the Doctor says briskly. “And we’re not twins. We are separate entities.”

The TARDIS whooshes back into the Hub. “Who’s a separate entity?” Mickey asks.

“I am. And him. We are not the same person.”

The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS. “Not anymore.”

“We could call them Doctor One and Doctor Two,” Gwen suggests.

“This Doctor and That Doctor,” Ianto adds.

“Excuse me!” Doctor Two (or Rose’s Doctor, or the Doctor from the parallel world) says impatiently. “Impending end of the world? Could we stay focused? In the interests of time, I will answer to ‘Doctor’, or ‘John’, or ‘Doctor Tyler-Smith’. Does that help you?”

“He says he’ll answer to any of those,” Tony says in the midst of all this, “but half the time he doesn’t notice his name being called.”

“Excuse me. I always notice my name.”

“You notice if someone calls you ‘Doctor’. Anything else is like, a fifty-fifty chance.”

Dr. John Tyler-Smith looks very annoyed.

“It’s true! It makes Rose crazy because people always call him something he forgets to answer to.”

“You’re exaggerating. I certainly respond to my name. It just depends on whether I want to.” Having disposed of that, he turns to the original Doctor.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“What did you find?”

“There wasn’t much. A very small hole in the universe. It may lead back to your world, it may lead someplace else. I couldn’t tell if it was widening or closing up.”

“That can’t be it. Our world is experiencing changes. Something is pulling Tony back here, and it’s getting harder to travel across to get him   
back.” He indicates the scratches on his face.

“There has to be a way to fix this,” Tony insists. “I can’t do this the rest of my life.”

“It’s no fun for the rest of us, either,” his brother-in-law agrees. 

The Doctor frowns slightly. “Your injuries came from traveling across?”

“Yes.”

“How long has that been happening?”

“It doesn’t happen every time. But it’s been getting worse when it does.”

“And Rose is safe?”

“Rose is safe. She is home tracking us and she will guide us back home.” Their eyes meet. “She is safe,” Rose’s Doctor repeats again.

“I know. Thank you.”

That admission costs him, and Rose’s Doctor sighs. “You made the right decision. Never think otherwise.”

“I know. Does she-” He stops, embarrassed to be saying this to what is essentially himself.

Talking to what is essentially yourself means you don’t always need to complete your sentences. “She wasn’t very happy with you at first. But she got over it. You gave her a consolation prize.”

“You weren’t a consolation prize!”

“No, you left us both together and hoped for the best. Not your best move, I might add. But she’s forgiven you.”

Ianto yells out a warning. Light is shimmering around Tony. “Get a reading on it!” the Doctor shouts, grabbing his sonic screwdriver.

Tony turns to his brother-in-law, begging for help. That Doctor lunges for him, grabbing the boy’s arm before they disappear from sight.

“That’s the fastest it’s happened yet,” Gwen murmurs.

“Anything, Doctor?” Jack asks.

“There’s no trace of energy. Nothing to follow.”

Suddenly the air opens up and they’re back in the Hub. Tony is clinging to the Doctor. Their hair stands on end as if they had just gone through a wind tunnel. 

“Bloody hell.” The Doctor releases Tony and coughs violently, hands on his knees.

“That’s never happened before,” Tony tells them unnecessarily. Behind him, the Doctor straightens up and searches out the original Doctor. Their eyes meet. 

“It’s not the Void. We were pulled across to home and then back to here. I couldn’t tell what was pushing and what was pulling us. It’s getting more violent. If it continues we’ll eventually lose him.”

Gwen and Ianto look appalled. Jack winces.

The (original) Doctor looks down at Tony. “I won’t let that happen,” he says. “We’ll find a way.”

Tony doesn’t know this Doctor. He turns to look behind him at Rose’s husband. Up until that point he’s known he was called the Doctor but never gave it a thought. As a child he called this man John, and thought it was just an oddity that others would refer to him by his title, even Rose.

Now he’s realizing that there is more to this man than he ever thought to ask about.

“John?” he says tentatively.

John smiles at him. “We will fix this,” he assures Tony, and Tony allows himself to relax. This man he believes.

 

“There has to be more we can do,” Mickey is complaining. “We can’t just sit around here doing nothing.”

“You’re welcome to go home,” Jack tells him.

“Mickey’s right,” the Doctor says. “Time was we could buzz around the universe and solve the problems of the world and be home by tea.”

“Double the universe, double the problems,” Gwen says lightly.

Tony jerks away from the table where he’s been sitting. “Do you feel that?”

“Feel what?” both Doctors ask in unison.

The air opens up, a beam of energy appears, and a woman calmly steps out.

“Riley!”

She is unhurt and able to stand without too much trouble after this trip.

“Doctor!” She scans the room for the man she knows as the Doctor. Catching sight of the two of them, she corrects herself. “John.”   
“I’m here, Riley. How did you get here?”

She shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have come, it’s not safe anymore. Our machines aren’t able to follow the readings any longer. It’s getting stronger and more unpredictable.”

“It’s the opposite here,” Jack begins, but she talks right over him.

“It may be weaker here but it’s worse on our side. Aliens are being pulled to Earth,” she tells the Doctor she knows. “We’ve been tracking alien crafts only to have them disappear in mid-flight.”

“How is that possible?”

“No one knows. It’s not safe anymore. If Tony is pulled back it may kill him the next time. I don’t know that any of us can return until this is resolved.”

“We’ve managed so far, Riley. If we manage to-”

“John,” she interrupts him, “I wasn’t the first one sent to find you. The dimension manipulators don’t always work the way they want.” She won’t say anything more, because Tony is there, but he needs more information.

“You weren’t the first? Who was?”

Riley takes a deep breath. “Ian. Ian was first. He came back unconscious.”

“We knew that could be a risk. Is he all right?”

“Ian is fine. Jackson insisted on going next. He said he could find you and Tony and bring you back.”

“He’s not here.”

“No, he’s not. He didn’t come back on his own like Ian managed to. Whatever drew Tony in caught hold of him. It sent him back to us.” She looks around the room. “He’s dead, John. If we continue this way, we’ll all be dead if we try to go home.”

Tony stares at her in horror.

“Poor Jackson,” the Doctor murmurs. 

“It’s stronger on your end,” the (first) Doctor states. “Weaker here. Tony will be unharmed as long as he stays here.”

“How do we keep him here?” Jack asks.

“Can we lock him up somewhere?” Mickey suggests.

“This energy rift will not be stopped by a cage or by locks,” Riley disagrees. “You haven’t seen what it’s capable of. We have to stop it. If we don’t we’ll be killed if we go back. We’ll have to stay here on this world forever.”

“Why did you come? Where is Rose?” The fear in his voice is obvious.

“She’s manning the computers, trying to keep things stable. She would have come, but Pete wouldn’t let her.”

“Thank you, Pete.”

“We have to go back home!” Tony cries. “What about Mum and Dad? We can’t stay here forever.”

“Don’t worry,” his brother-in-law says soothingly. “We will fix this.” He glances around the room. “The two of us and Torchwood! How can we not fix this?”

He and the Doctor meet gazes again. They’re alike enough to know what the other is thinking. If they’re not enough, nothing will be.

“We can do this,” the Doctor says finally. He’s still not quite sure what to make of this other him, the one who grew from a hand and from Donna, but he seems stable enough for now.

His counterpart seems to sense this. “I assure you that I haven’t felt the urge to commit genocide in quite some time,” he says dryly. “I am in fact a model citizen.”

“Well. That’s good to know.”

“I always was, as a matter of fact.” he continues. “Which you would have realized for yourself if you hadn’t shut me off in a parallel world.”

The Doctor’s face darkens. “Don’t you dare-”

“I’m not saying it was wrong of you. It was, but I’m not saying it. I’m just suggesting that next time try to think of yourself instead of the entire universe, and maybe things will work out in your favor.”

“Don’t you presume to judge my actions.”

“But who better to judge your actions than yourself? But you never could handle being criticized.”

“I - what - you -”

A flash of light cuts him off. When the room clears, Rose is standing there, looking shaken but determined.

“Rose!” Tony exclaims in relief. Rose will fix things.

“Rose?” Jack and Riley say in surprised unison.

“Rose,” the (first) Doctor says under his breath. He has missed her more than he can admit to himself.

Rose’s husband strides up to her, looking absolutely furious.

“What the hell have you done?” he demands. “Why did you come here?”

“I’ve come to help close the breach,” Rose says. She is braving it out, but her face is pale. 

“Have you lost your mind? You were supposed to bring us back! How will that happen now?”

“I’m not the only one who can do that. Jake is waiting. It’s okay. It’s safe.”

“Safe! What happens if we die here, Rose? Or we can’t get back? Or something happens in between? They’ll never know what happened to us!”

“Nothing will happen!” she insists. “We’ll be fine! We’ll do this and go home.”

It is the Rose he loves so fiercely. Stubborn and strong and determined to help who she loves no matter what the risk. Those traits have saved his life more than once. Now he can’t believe that she’s done so.

“Ian was injured doing this! Jackson is dead! Dead,” he says, so loudly that the others no longer pretend not to be listening. “How could you do this, Rose? What the hell were you thinking?”

“I couldn’t let you come without me!”

“We’re stuck here!” he shouts. “With you at home I knew that even if I died it would be all right. You’d still be there. This way...they’ll never know if we lived or died.”

“We have each other,” Rose whispers.

“What good is that?” he demands, wanting so badly to shake her. “What good is that if we’re alone? If they’re left alone? What will your mother do without Tony? I came by myself, Rose, to keep that from happening! And you turn right around and do what I was most afraid of!”

Rose’s face is white. Her eyes are huge and she’s trying to speak but can’t find the words.

The Doctor frowns and moves towards them. No one should be allowed to talk to Rose that way. Riley stops him with a hand on his arm.

“I couldn’t let you do this by yourself,” Rose says quietly.

He is so angry that he can’t speak properly. “This was incredibly foolish, Rose. This is the most foolish thing you’ve ever done. We could die closing the breach. I left you there so you’d be safe!”

Riley waits. He’s shaking, and though she doesn’t think he would ever harm his wife, she doesn’t think she’ll stop this world’s Doctor if he intervenes.

“What happens if we can’t get home again?” Rose’s husband asks her, and the Doctor stands up straight. It isn’t anger on his counterpart’s face. He knows that look all too well. He’s felt it, time and time again, for his companions. For his friends. He’s felt it for Rose.

Riley feels him stiffen beside her. Looking from him to her friends, she sees what the Doctor has already sensed. Now she sees that the Doctor she knows isn’t shouting at Rose out of anger. He is shaking, but not from anger. From fear. 

“What happens if we can’t get home again?” he asks again, and now the Doctor has the strangest urge to step forward and help him. “What will they do? We’re on this side and your parents are on the other.”

“They’ll be fine!” Rose is in tears. “I couldn’t let you do this by yourself.”

“I’m not by myself! Riley is here. And Jack and his team. He’s here.”

Startled, Rose looks away from her husband and locates the Doctor. He raises his hand.

“Hello.”

Rose seems to gather herself together. She clears her throat. “Hello, Doctor. How are you?” Despite himself, her husband rolls his eyes at the painfully formal greeting.

“I’m good, thanks. You?”

She nods. “Oh, you know.”

“Yes, we do,” her husband says briskly. “Worlds at war, that sort of thing. Now that Rose has chosen to risk her life to be here, let’s oblige her by getting to work.”

She turns to glare at him. “It is lucky for you we have an audience,” she says under her breath.

He leans in close so only she can hear him. “It’s lucky for you that there’s no way to get back home safely, or I’d have you there already, locked up in a holding cell.”

She starts to speak, the look in her eyes almost enough to kill him right there.

“And I’d tell your mother,” he finishes for good measure.

“You bloody alien,” she murmurs. “Do you forgive me or not?”

“Not. I most emphatically do not. But you’re here. Let’s do what we have to do.”

It’s not the most reassuring conversation they’ve ever had, but they are in the middle of something deadly serious. Rose decides it will have to do for now.

She turns away and smiles at the room. “Tony. You’re all right.” She gives him a hug.

“I’m glad you came, whatever John says.”

“Stop it,” she tells him with a grin.

“We’re fixing this, right, Rose?”

“Yes. We are fixing this and we will go home and it will be over.” Rose releases him and turns to Jack. He opens his arms and she allows herself to be lifted up in the air.

“Never thought I’d get to see you again,” he says.

“Me either. How are you?”

“Oh, still alive.”

She smiles, though her eyes have gotten a bit teary. “”I just didn’t want to lose you.”

“Clearly. It has come in handy.” He sets her back on her feet. 

“I’m sorry I can’t change it.”

“It’s all right, Rose, really. I’ve had a long time to come to terms with it.”

“Well, then. Good.” Rose is uncertain how to respond to this, but she takes him at his word. Looking around, she smiles at Gwen. “I don’t think we were properly introduced before.”

Gwen smiles back. “No, I suppose we weren’t. It was a bit busy last time, wasn’t it? I’m Gwen Cooper.”

“I’m Rose. Rose Tyler-Smith. You’ve met my husband and my brother already.”

“We have, yes. This is Ianto Jones. You know Jack, of course.”

“Hello, Jack,” Rose’s Doctor says now. He’s standing with his hands in his pockets, not exactly pouting but definitely still unhappy with the way things are turning out. 

“Doctor,” Jack says. “Good to see you again.”

“Hi, Rose.”

Rose smiles a hello at Mickey. “How are you?”

“I’m doing good.”

“All right,” Jack says into the silence. “Let’s get together and figure this out.” He ushers them all into the conference room. Rose’s husband glances at her and nods his head slightly before leaving the room with Tony. She smiles back at him and waits until everyone else has gone.

Finally Rose takes a deep breath and looks at the Doctor. He’s standing still, watching her. Love and longing are in his eyes and it almost breaks her heart, but then his expression changes to happiness, and she can almost hear his thoughts. He got his way - kept her safe and let her have a happy human life, and that means more to him than the pain of losing her.

She sighs and walks over to him. His hands are in his pockets, watching her come closer.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” he answers with a small smile. “It’s very nice to see you again.”

“Yeah, turns out travel between parallel worlds isn’t quite as impossible as we thought.”

“No,” he agrees, looking over at all the people who shouldn’t be on this world. “Guess not.”

She laughs and throws her arms around him in a giant hug. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“Oh, Rose,” he whispers back.

“How are you? Are you happy? Are you traveling with someone?”

“I’m fine, I promise,” he assures her. “I’m on my own right now. Your brother presented a mystery I couldn’t pass up.”

She steps back and searches his features carefully. “You look just the same,” she tells him. “Even the suit.”

“You look beautiful,” he tells her honestly, and is taken aback when she laughs. 

“The last time you told me that we were here, remember? In Cardiff.”

“Surely I told you you were beautiful after that,” he protests.

“Beautiful for a human,” she amends.

If this isn’t the time for honesty, it never will be, he tells himself. “You were always beautiful to me, Rose. I should have said it before.”

They’ve crossed over to something she isn’t comfortable with. She smiles sadly. “It’s all right. Universes in peril, yeah? No time for anything else.”

“Never is,” he agrees. “Shall we head in?”

“Yeah.” Rose wipes at her eyes. So many things she would like to say, but time and circumstances have changed her too much to do so.

“Are you happy, Rose?” he asks quietly.

“I am, yeah. I’m very happy.” And she is. The greatest irony of her life is that the man who made her the most miserable also made her the most happy, with the single act of stranding her on a beach with his double. 

“Do you forgive me?” he asks her, watching her face carefully.

She doesn’t ask what he needs forgiveness for. She would have forgiven him anything he ever did. She still would. “I do, yeah. You made the right decision, Doctor.”

“It was a long time before I could believe that,” he admits. 

“Oh, me, too! But I believe it now.”

“Then I am very happy, Rose.” He leads her into the room and to an empty chair at the table. 

“What were you thinking?” Riley asks quietly as Rose takes a seat beside her. “You saw what the risks were.”

“I had to do it,” Rose whispers back. “I couldn’t let him come alone.”

“But now we’re all stuck on this side. Are you sure Jake can bring us back?” Riley isn’t completely serious - there are many Torchwood personnel who can lead them back home once the breach is closed - but Rose can’t help a nervous giggle.

The others look over disapprovingly, her husband and brother with the biggest frowns. The time Tony has spent with them growing up is obvious. He even has the same frown as her Doctor.

Rose stares them down. If you can’t laugh in the midst of a multi-universe crisis, she doesn’t know when you can.

“Okay, here’s what we know,” Jack says briskly. “We were confused for quite a while, but we finally realized that this had nothing to do with the Rift.”

“Of course not,” Rose says in surprise.

Jack looks down at the table for a minute. “Yes, thanks, Rose. We had less intel to work with than you, apparently. Anyway, the Rift isn’t widening.”

“There is a breach between our two worlds,” the Doctor says, looking across the table at Rose. “It opens up to the other world and somehow it’s related to Tony. Is that what your people have come up with?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible to close it on our own?” Ianto asks. “We’ve done some impossible things before.”

“We have,” Jack agrees. “I’d rank this as somewhere below Dalek invasion and destruction of the universe, but possibly higher than the mayor trying to blow up Cardiff so she can return to Raxicoricofallipatorious.”

Gwen, Ianto, Riley and Tony all turn to look at him.

“Er, long story,” he says. “I’ll tell you one day.”

“It’s much closer to the first one,” Rose’s Doctor says. “Unless we can fix this, the breach will continue to pull at Tony until there’s nothing left.”

“Well, then,” the Doctor says cheerfully. “Only one thing to do. Fix it and repair the breach. Find the spot, heal it, close things off, and send you lot back where you came from.”

“Just like that, is it?” Riley asks skeptically.

“Nothing to it,” both Doctors assure her in unison. They exchange an uneasy glance.

“We need to know what’s causing the breach in the first place,” Riley says. “Don’t we?”

“Oh, but we do,” Rose’s Doctor says suddenly.

“You know what’s causing this?” the Doctor demands. 

“There’s no other explanation,” Rose’s Doctor replies. “Tony keeps getting pulled to this world. What’s special about him? He’s the only one of us to have been born on the other world.”

“I was born on the other world,” Riley reminds him.

This throws him off track. “Yes. Well. Apart from you.”

“And?” Rose prompts him. Really, she thought his attention span had been improving before this. 

“So his mother was born on this world. His father was born on the other world. That’s never happened before! It’s an impossibility, and now that impossibility has become a fact, and the universes are attempting to correct it. They’re both competing for him because he belongs to both of them! That’s why he keeps coming here!”

Rose’s Doctor finishes up with a flourish and looks expectantly at his audience.

There is remarkably little acclaim coming from them.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Rose says finally.

“Rose!”

“It is!” she insists. “Two worlds are fighting over a child?”

“It may not be that far-fetched,” the Doctor says thoughtfully. “If matter belonging to this universe crosses over, it’s just trying to retrieve it.”

“Then why am I not being pulled back and forth?” Rose demands. “We were born in this universe, too, and the only way we can move across is with a dimension manipulator.”

“I don’t know,” he admits.

“Tony was _new_ matter,” Ianto says hesitantly. “Jackie and Pete created something new that shouldn’t have existed in the other world.”

Both Doctors stare at him with such intensity that he starts to shift uncomfortably in his chair.

“It changes the order of things,” the Doctor says thoughtfully.

Rose’s Doctor is nodding his head. “A new child is a new creation. This universe wants her matter back.”

“You’re insane,” Rose says with finality.

“I am not insane. It makes perfect sense.”

“To a crazy person, maybe. To a rational adult, no.”

“It kind of makes sense to me,” Tony says hesitantly.

“No offense, kid, but you’re not exactly a leading authority,” Jack tells him.

“Either are they! No one knows why this is happening. It’s all just theories and guesses.”

“Don’t give away our secrets, Tony,” Rose’s Doctor says absently. “Right. Well, we don’t know what is causing this, but we know how to stop it.”

“How?” Rose asks him.

“We find the breach and close it.”

“Just like that? And it will work?”

“With the breach closed we can’t travel through it.”

“What if Tony is still pulled across?”

“Travel between closed parallel worlds will be impossible once the breach is closed.” Both Doctors have spoken together, and now they exchange a look of intense dislike.

Rose sighs.

Jack looks thoughtful again.

“We find the breach and close it up. Once it starts to heal there’ll be enough time to send you all back to your world before it seals up for good.” 

Jack nods at the Doctor’s explanation. “Fine. How do we find it?”

“We look for the weakness. I can go up in the TARDIS and locate it that way.”

“That’s the best way to do it,” Rose’s Doctor concedes.

The others shrug. “You’re the expert,” Gwen murmurs. She’s seen this man tow the entire planet behind his ship. She’s not about to question his competence here.

Rose is not so hesitant. “Can you locate it that way?”

“Yes.”

“All right then. The faster we do this, the faster we can avoid any more damage.”

“What’s a TARDIS?” Riley asks.

Ianto jumps up as an alarm sounds. “We have some activity north of here, Jack,” he reports. “It may be coming through the breach.”

An angry screech from far above seems to emphasize his words. Rose, her husband and Riley all look up in alarm.

“Is that a dinosaur?” Rose exclaims.

Her husband looks at Jack. “What the hell have you been doing here all these years?”

“She came through the Rift. What was I gonna do - send her home? We had to keep her.”

“I am done with field work,” Riley says decisively. “Done.”

 

“All right,” the Doctor says, rubbing his hands together. “I will try and trace the breach in the TARDIS. Jack, you and your team see what that disturbance is. If it’s the breach we can take care of it. If it’s the Rift, well, do what you can. Rose, keep Tony here and -” He stops talking as he spots Tony and watches him wink out of the room. “Again,” he sighs.

“He’s wearing a tracker,” Jack reminds them. “You can follow him with this.” He hands Rose the tracking device.

“Thanks, Jack. We’ll find him.”

“Mickey, I think you’ll be the most help finding Tony,” the Doctor continues.

Mickey is looking at the computer. He shakes his head. “Something else is opening up. I’ll go check it out.”

“Opening up?” the Doctor asks. “Where?” His last word is echoed by the other Doctor, and they both stop in their tracks to glare at each other.

“That’s enough,” Rose says impatiently. “You can’t help it. Let’s go find Tony.”

“This other breach may be the reason he’s gone,” her husband protests.

“Let’s go! We’ll find out soon enough.”

 

Mickey was right. The new disturbance was another breach. He can’t tell where the breach is, of course, it’s in space, but the readings on his handheld monitor show him where that activity happened. He comes upon Tony Tyler, lying motionless in a field, at the same time that Rose and her team find him.

“Tony!” Rose falls to her knees beside her brother.

“What did you see?” her Doctor asks, looking around.

“Didn’t see anything,” Mickey reports. “Just found him here.”

“He’s alive,” Rose says, looking up at them. “What are we going to do?”

Her husband is still looking around. “Love?” she says.

He turns to her. “Rose?”

“What do we do?” she asks again.

He runs his hands through his hair. “What do we do? I don’t know. Let’s take him back to Torchwood.”

Rose is clearly not happy with this response.

“He’s still alive, Rose,” Riley says. “Let’s see what we can do to keep him locked in place. Next time may be worse.”

“This is why I wanted you to stay behind!” Rose’s husband snaps. “If you’re too worried about him to function, it will be that much harder to get it done.” 

“And you’ll just be the model of objectivity?” she demands.

“I’ll do what needs to be done, yes.”

“I’m sure you will - just as soon as you know what that is.”

As they’re arguing Mickey nods to Riley and picks up the unconscious boy. “We’ll take him to the car,” Mickey says. “I’ll meet you back at the Hub.”

Riley gathers up Mickey’s equipment. Rose and her husband come to their senses. He starts towards Mickey, ready to take Tony from him, when Mickey and Tony vanish.

Just vanish.

Rose covers her mouth with her hands in dismay.

Riley drops the equipment in shock.

The Doctor looks around appraisingly. “We need to get back. We have to call Jack.”

“And the...other Doctor?” Riley asks. “Where is he? Up in the air somewhere?”

“Something like that. Come on, Rose.”

Rose is standing still, looking at where Mickey and Tony were.

“Rose,” he repeats. “Come on.”

“He’s gone,” she whispers. “And Mickey.”

“We’ll find them! Let’s get back and tell the others, and we will find him.”

“They could be anywhere.”

“He’s got the TARDIS. He can find them.”

“Rose,” Riley says gently. “Come on.”

How much can one universe take from her? Rose wonders to herself. Hasn’t enough happened to her to let her have some peace? To keep her brother safe? She lets herself be led by Riley. Her husband moves ahead of them, stalking out of the field where they were standing back toward the Torchwood jeep they were driving.

Rose feels pain for him, too. All he wanted was to keep his family safe. He thought that by leaving her behind, safe with her parents, he could bring Tony home and close the breach on his own. The risk to his life meant little to him, but risks to her and Tony are something else. She regrets the hurt her actions have caused, but she’s not sorry she came.

Mickey’s monitor, hanging from Riley’s utility belt, lets out a beep. Riley reads it as best she can and curses.

“Doctor, there’s another breach. Something is coming through!”

Above them the sky opens up and a long, low black spacecraft appears. 

He grabs both of their hands, jerking them forward. 

“Run!”


	3. Chapter 3

The spacecraft hovers in the air above them. If it’s moving, it’s doing so too slowly to be obvious.

“Come on!” Rose’s Doctor urges them, pulling them along by the hands.

“Wait!” Rose gasps. “What is it? Who are they?”

A ray of energy streams past them, setting a tree on fire.

“Are they shooting at us?” Riley exclaims.

“Keep moving!” They’re almost at the edge of the field. He pushes first Rose, then Riley, down into a shallow depression. Popping his head back up, he tracks the movement of the spacecraft.

“Who are they?” Rose whispers.

“Shh!”

“They’re shooting at us!” Riley says again in a loud whisper. Another beam has hit the ground a few feet in front of them.

A thought occurs to Rose, and she starts to stand. “Did they take Tony and Mickey?”

“Get down!” Her husband yanks her down by the arm. “What is wrong with you? They’re shooting at us!”

“If they have them -”

“Where is that little computer Mickey was using?”

“I dropped it,” Riley says, eyes locked on the ship.

“You dropped it? Why did you drop it?”

“It pulled off my belt loop when you grabbed my hand.”

He huffs impatiently. “So it’s my fault.”

“Do you recognize the ship?” Rose asks urgently. “It doesn’t look familiar.”

“No. It could be anyone. Or anything.” The Doctor starts to stand up, and this time Rose pulls him down. 

“They’re still shooting at us. You’re no good to us dead.”

The ship lowers in the sky, coming closer.

“How many people live nearby?” Riley murmurs. “What could they be planning?”

They watch it in dread, but even as another ray hits the ground nearby, the ship vanishes.

“It’s gone!” Rose jumps up and runs into the field.

“Rose!” He grabs for her and misses. “Get back! It may be a cloaking device!”

“No one cloaks as they’re shooting! Look for clues!”

“Clues to what? They’re gone.”

“Clues to where Tony is!”

“Did you see that?” a voice demands from out of sight. “It was a ship, wasn’t it?” The Doctor emerges from a clump of trees, breathing heavily. “It was there and then it was gone. Were they shooting at you? Are you all right?”

“They came out of nowhere,” Rose’s Doctor answers. “Right after Tony and Mickey disappeared.”

“What, again?” The Doctor looks all around, as though they will suddenly reappear. “Did that ship take them?”

“We don’t know,” Rose’s Doctor replies. 

“Maybe,” Rose says at the same time.

“It came through the breach,” Riley says, as if it is so obvious she can’t believe the others didn’t think of this themselves. “The opening, the rift, whatever it is, it caused Tony and Mickey to disappear. And the same thing brought that ship here. It could have come from anywhere in the universe, right? There are other worlds here besides Earth.”

“There are,” the Doctor says slowly. “As there are in your universe. It could be from anywhere. I saw it arrive, but I don’t know where it came from. I followed it here.”

“Then maybe they’re not the ones who took Tony,” Rose says.

“Tony and Mickey disappeared just like he always does. They weren’t taken by anyone, Rose.” Her husband tries to make this sound like a good thing, but fails.

“If they just...left...they could be anywhere. They could be back home,” Rose says, trying to remain calm.

“Yes. Home right now, with your mum and dad.”

“Or they could be someplace else.” Rose faces her husband. “He doesn’t always come here to this world. Sometimes it was other places, remember?”

“Of course I remember. I’m hardly likely to forget. We’ll find him. They’re fine, wherever they are.”

The Doctor is looking around. “We need to find Jack and his team.”

“Let’s get back to Torchwood,” Riley says.

“We don’t have time to drive around looking for the Captain. Let’s call him. Do you have your phone?” the Doctor asks Rose.

“My phone doesn’t work anymore,” Rose admits. She feels ridiculous, but she can’t look him in the eye.

“Your superphone?” he asks incredulously. “With the battery I put in? It should work forever! From anywhere.”

“It was damaged. After I fell through to...the other world. It never worked right. We managed to hook it up to the control room at Torchwood, and I could talk with them the last...the last time I came here, but then it stopped working.”

The Doctor feels ridiculous, but he can’t believe the phone is gone. It’s almost like he’s lost a friend. She carried it everywhere she went. “It worked when we landed in Pete’s world,” he hears himself say.

“It doesn’t work in our world anymore.” The way his counterpart phrases this makes the Doctor look at him. 

“Yes. Your world.”

“The one you left us in,” Rose’s Doctor continues, and Rose takes his hand. He takes the hint and lets the matter drop. The Doctor looks like he has more to say on the subject, even if they don’t, but then the monitor beeps again. 

“More activity,” Riley reports.

“Come on.” Rose’s Doctor wipes his hands on his shirt. “Let’s get to the car.”

“The TARDIS is right beyond these trees.”

Rose and her Doctor stare at him. He’s not sure what they’re thinking.

“I’ll pass on the TARDIS thing,” Riley says. “Thanks, though.”

“We can’t go flying through Cardiff,” Rose begins. 

“We’re not going on the TARDIS,” her husband says decisively. “Anything can come through this breach.”

“Nothing can get the TARDIS,” the Doctor says, greatly affronted by this.

“We’ll take the car,” Riley says firmly. “It’s right over there.”

“I’ll drive.” Rose’s Doctor hasn’t stopped speaking before the skies open up again. “Bloody hell! Again?”

“Get down!” The Doctor guides Rose and Riley down into the depression they just climbed out of. “Come on!” he shouts impatiently.

His counterpart is still scanning the sky, looking up at the spacecraft.

“John! Get down!” Rose and Riley yell together. He falls to the ground beside the Doctor, grunting as he hits the dirt.

“At least they’re not shooting at us.” Rose is encouraged by this until several small trees nearby suddenly come alight. She covers her head with her arms. 

“You all right?” Rose asks her husband. She’s on the other side of the Doctor, and has to lift her head up to see him.

“I’m fine.” The shooting has stopped, and he looks the Doctor over. “Still wearing the coat, I see.”

The Doctor tries not to feel defensive and fails. “Yes. So?”

“Oh, nothing. Just a bit pretentious, isn’t it? Suit and coat and tie everywhere you go.”

The Doctor eyes his counterpart’s jeans. “If you say so. Is that how you dress for the field these days?”

“I wasn’t exactly forewarned. And Rose chose this shirt.”

The Doctor moves his gaze from the jeans to the blue shirt, now streaked with dirt and grass stains.

“When you’re done sniping at each other, can we get going?” Rose demands. “Breaches through space and time, disappearing friends, you know, things slightly more important than who’s wearing what?”

“The ship is still hovering.” Riley hasn’t taken her eyes off of it.

“As rescue operations go,” Rose’s husband says thoughtfully, “this one is a bust so far.”

Rose runs a hand through her hair, dislodging leaves and dirt. Her ponytail has come free. “My elastic is gone. Do you have one in your pocket?”

Her husband fishes around in his jacket and tosses a handful of hair ties out. They land between Rose and the Doctor, scattering all over the ground. Rose wraps her hair up in a hot pink satin band, not at all what the Doctor would have picked out for her. He is quick to redirect that thought, because he is not picking things out for her, because she is no longer his.

As he’s trying to not think about Rose he catches the eye of Rose’s husband. He’s raised his eyebrows and is watching him closely. The Doctor remembers, somewhat uneasily, that this man is part Time Lord, which means he may still be telepathic.

“What happened to you?” he asks, motioning to his counterpart’s neck. It’s an honest question, as well as changing the focus of his thoughts, just in case.

“Where?”

“There. Your neck.”

Rose’s husband swipes at his neck. “Oh. Had an accident, years back. Nothing to worry about.”

“You’ve scars.” The Doctor doesn’t know whether to be amazed or annoyed. “Those weren’t there before.”

“Before when? When I came from you? Of course they weren’t - it happened after.”

“We don’t scar, as a rule.”

“I’m part human. Apparently I do.”

“What was it? Are those claw marks?”

“It was a long time ago,” Rose says, her voice trying a bit too hard to stay calm. “We’re fine.”

“Were you hurt too?” The Doctor’s concern for Rose definitely overrides any concern for her husband.

“It was a very long time ago. He wouldn’t have any scars at all if he’d kept his wounds covered like I told him to. Stubborn alien.”

“I was not going to walk around wrapped up like a mummy. You could hide your bandages.”

“You had bandages?” The Doctor’s worry for Rose increases, and he forgets to care about nearby telepaths. “Were you injured? Where?”

“It was a long time ago, Doctor. Working for Torchwood, well, things happen, yeah?”

He has no response, because he’s the reason she still works for Torchwood. He’s the reason she’s not been traveling with him all these years. He’s done it to himself, and he has no one else to blame.

“You made your choice. You left us together, and now you’re sorry to see it play out.”

The Doctor turns his head. “Is that how you see it?”

“I’m you. How can I not see it? I didn’t plan this.”

The Doctor sighs. Definitely still telepathic. “I know you didn’t. It’s all right.”

“It’s gone,” Riley says suddenly. “Let’s go.”

Both Doctors stand up and head towards the Torchwood jeep, walking several yards apart and at different speeds.

“I thought they were the same person once,” Riley complains. “Shouldn’t they be happy to see each other?”

Rose sighs. Maybe they would have been - had she not been there. “It’s...complicated.”

They’ve just settled into the jeep when the Doctor regrets giving in so easily.

“We would have been safer in the TARDIS. I’ll go back and meet you at Torchwood.” He’s about to open the door when the jeep moves forward in a quick burst of speed, knocking him back against the seat.

“Sorry,” says his double, not sounding at all sorry about it. “Just getting used to the transmission.”

“To the - you were driving this when we left Torchwood!”

“We may need the TARDIS later,” Rose says. “Let it stay put for now until we know what we’re dealing with.”

“Rose, don’t be ridiculous.”

She’s in the front seat beside her husband, who’s driving down the grassy lane looking for a main road. She looks at the Doctor and Riley in the backseat.

“I’m not being ridiculous. We have more experience with this than you do. It can throw you across the universe in a heartbeat. In something as powerful as the TARDIS, anything could happen.”

“It could cause the time vortex to unleash,” her husband adds.

“That’s impossible.”

He rolls his eyes. “Everything you’ve ever seen and done, and you’re still using that word? I thought you’d have made more progress since we’ve been gone.”

“Progress? I need to make progress? What about you? The last time I saw you, you had just destroyed a race of people!”

“They were Daleks, not people!”

Riley looks at them both in horror. “What are you saying? Did John kill a group of people? Is that why he got sent to our Earth?”

“No!” Rose says impatiently. “Doctor, you’re not being fair. He saved our lives! He saved the universe!”

“He killed them.”

“As did you,” Rose’s husband snaps. Their eyes meet in the mirror. “As did you. We both did it for a reason, and the reasons were valid. To say otherwise now negates everything we ever did.”

The Doctor struggles with himself to stay silent. He fails. “I did what I had to. You had a choice.”

“Yes, I had a choice. A choice to die and watch everything else die with me. I wasn’t going to do that. You saved everything in creation and you’re only angry that you survived it. I fulfilled the prophecy. You know it had to be done. You just couldn’t bring yourself to do it.”

They were the same person, once. It is the truth, and it’s painful to hear.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Rose’s Doctor continues more softly. “I had to be there to do it. You needed me.”

Is he being forgiven by himself? the Doctor wonders distantly. That’s something he never managed to do. Maybe he needed this man to make it possible.

“And how did you repay me?” the other Doctor continues. “That’s right! You called me a genocidal maniac. And then you abandoned me as a lost cause. Lovely.”

Maybe he doesn’t need this man, after all.

“You’re giving me a headache,” Riley complains. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but stop it.”

“They have some issues to work out,” Rose tells her. “Keep going, love. Main road is up ahead.”

She always calls him love. She will refer to him as the Doctor or John to others, but that’s what he is to everyone else. Sometime after they left Bad Wolf Bay he became his own person, and while it seemed natural for others to call him the Doctor she needed something of her own to call him, something that belonged just to her. When he is preoccupied or busy he sometimes forgets to answer to John, sometimes doesn’t even hear the Doctor. 

When she calls him love he always hears her.

In the backseat the Doctor takes a deep breath. He’d left them alone on Bad Wolf Bay so long ago, wanting them to be happy, forcing them along that path. Now that it’s in front of him it’s harder to deal with, even now. Even though he wanted her to be happy.

“We’ll meet up with Jack, trace where Tony went to, close the breach - we’ll use the TARDIS for that - and send you back home,” he says, to cover the odd feeling in his chest. Elation, that his plan actually worked, and sadness that it did.

“Rose, I don’t see a road anywhere ahead. What map are you reading?”

“I don’t have a map. I’m remembering the way we came.”

“You’re remembering? How is that efficient or exact?” The words come out rather rude. “Sweetheart,” he tacks on quickly.

“I’d forgotten what it’s like when you two work together,” Riley says with a sigh. “Can we focus here, please?”

“I thought you all worked together at Torchwood?” the Doctor asks, looking at Rose. He’s not so much curious as he is eager to change the direction of his thoughts.

“We do, yeah,” Rose says. “We just don’t work together in the field anymore.”

“Don’t tell me - they’ve grounded him because of erratic behavior.”

“My behavior is not erratic.” Rose’s Doctor emphasizes this point by steering through a turn without slowing down. Several cars honk angrily in their wake.

“We’ve been together only fourteen minutes, and already I can see that you’re incredibly unpredictable.”

“Thirteen minutes, twenty-nine seconds.”

“Let’s find Tony and Mickey,” Rose interrupts. The last thing they need right now is for both men to engage in some sort of bizarre Time Lord one-upmanship. 

“There’s some kind of computer back here,” Riley volunteers, and she and the Doctor peer at the screen, trying to turn it on. “I think it’s a GPS system.”

“No need, Riley, we’re relying on our sense of direction.”

“You were driving - don’t you remember the way we came?” Rose asks crossly. “It wasn’t that long ago.”

“No, I was -” A lightning bolt hits the road in front of them. The jeep veers to one side of the road, then to the other.

The Doctor looks behind them. “The ship is back. They’re opening fire.”

Riley looks behind them as well. “Are they following us? Are they aiming at us?”

Another bolt hits nearby.

“Looks that way!” Rose’s Doctor steps on the gas. “Ha! Road up ahead.”

“Told you,” Rose can’t resist saying. 

Another bolt comes even closer. They can feel the heat from the intense energy.

Rose’s husband curses. “I’m going to outrun it.”

“Outrun it?” Riley repeats. “It’s a spaceship! You can’t outrun it.”

“Watch me.”

Rose twists around in the backseat and meets the Doctor’s eye. “Put your seat belt on,” she says urgently.

Soon the jeep is flying over the road at speeds that would make lesser men ill. The Doctor holds on tight, vowing to never drive in an automobile again. Riley’s eyes are closed tight and she is hunched over, hoping she doesn’t die today.

“Slow down!” Rose pleads. “Slow down. We will never escape it.”

“Grab the wheel, Rose!” he shouts. From his jacket pocket he pulls out a small metal tube and rolls the window down.

“What are you doing?” the Doctor shouts. “No guns! What’s happened to you? We don’t even know what they are!”

“Not a gun!” He aims his tube out the window and presses a button. He’s aiming blindly but hoping for the best.

You’re going to kill us!” the Doctor shouts.

“No, I’m not!”

“It’s a neutralizing device,” Riley explains after a quick look upwards. “It’s supposed to stop a large aircraft in its tracks. If we can stop it, they’ll stop shooting at us.”

The car is swerving wildly across the road. Rose is steering with one hand while her husband aims out the window, pressing the gas pedal harder and softer as he moves.

“Let me drive!” Rose says finally, unhooking her seat belt.

“Be careful!” Riley and the Doctor chorus from the backseat.

Rose slides across the seat and climbs up on her husband’s lap. He steadies her with his hands on her waist. Helping her shift to the side, he slides out from beneath her, leaving her sitting in the driver’s seat. Rose takes control of the car and it immediately slows to a normal speed. He rolls down the passenger window and takes aim again.

Something sparks from overhead, a dark shadow passes the jeep, and then the air is silent.

Sparks fly from the neutralizer as well. Rose’s Doctor tosses it aside. “Burned out,” he says unnecessarily.

“Just in time,” the Doctor notes. “They’re gone.”

“It worked?” Rose asks hopefully.

“For now.” He sits back in the passenger seat and runs a hand through his hair. Light glints on his silver wedding ring. “We’ll be back soon,” he says. “Maybe Jack can help us figure out what that was. Let me drive, Rose.”

“There’s no time for that, love, I’m making great time here.”

“Shift.”

Rose heaves a great sigh, but they perform the same shifting, sliding routine until he’s back in the driver’s seat. There are some aspects about being a human male that he has taken to enthusiastically, and driving on this world appears to be one of them.

“Don’t crash into anything,” she tells him. “The paperwork would be just awful.”

“Is there a lot of alien contact on this planet?” Riley asks the Doctor.

“Not too much, no. Not the sort you would want, anyway.”

In the front seat Rose’s husband has begun humming a tune under his breath. The same few notes are repeated over and over again.

“What are you doing?” the Doctor asks. It’s not a tune he recognizes.

“Stop that,” Rose tells her husband. He looks startled, as though he didn’t know he was doing it. 

“Sorry.”

“Riley, is the monitor showing any new activity? Decreased activity? Anything?” Rose asks hopefully. The more information they can gather, the better their chances of finding Tony and Mickey.

“It’s still not working,” Riley says. “Of course! I forgot my own computer.”

“Your own?” the Doctor questions, peering at her.

“Torchwood issue. The best for field work.” Riley pulls it out of her knapsack. “Does all sorts of readings.” Rose’s Doctor takes a sharp turn and the computer nearly falls to the floor. 

“Sorry!” he says. He’s driving as fast as he can, determined to find Jack and his team as soon as possible.

Riley examines her computer closely. “It should still be working.” She trips a lever, activating the medical scanner. “Looks good. According to this, we are four healthy adults. That’s correct. Normal brain wave activity, six heartbeats, body temps- oh.” Looking up, she makes rapidly counts heads. 

“It’s all right,” the Doctor says reassuringly. “I’ve got two hearts.”

“You’ve what?”

“He’s an alien, Riley,” Rose’s Doctor says from the front seat. “Remember? I’m part alien.”

“That’s right.” Riley looks down at the screen again and frowns. “Still. That would make it five heartbeats, not six. Something’s off. I guess it’s damaged, unless...” She stops and thinks a moment. “Well, it’s not me. So unless one of you lot are pregnant...” She means it as a joke, but something in the air changes as she says the words.

It’s clearly not the Doctor. But the other possibility occurs to them at the same time, and together they turn their heads to the front seat. Rose’s husband is driving, but he’s still following the conversation. The car jerks to the side as he loses focus on the road. Amid their yells he rights it back onto the lane. Slowly, he turns his head to look at his wife. Rose is looking out the front window, a determinedly serene expression on her face.

“Rose?” he asks in a strangled voice.

She finally looks at him. “Yes?”

_“Yes?_ What do you think?”

“What do I think about what?”

“Riley?”

“Still six heartbeats.”

He stares at Rose. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she says impatiently. He swallows hard and continues to look at her as he drives.

“Stop it!” she insists. “Of course not.”

He narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Chipped beef on toast,” he says slowly.

She gives him a look of annoyance.

“Liver and onions.”

Rose sighs and rolls her eyes. “This is sad.”

“Chips with malt vinegar,” he says, very clearly and slowly and deliberately.

Rose’s face abruptly loses all color and she covers her mouth with her hand.

Her reaction is all the answer he needs. The car swerves again, sending Riley into the Doctor. “Hey!”

“I cannot believe this,” Rose’s Doctor says to the heavens in general, now safely pulled to the side of the road. “Kill me. Just kill me now because nothing worse could possibly happen to me today! You knew you were pregnant and you hopped over to a parallel world anyway?”

 

No one speaks after the outburst. Rose is looking straight ahead, a stubborn expression on her face. Her husband is driving the Torchwood jeep through traffic with very little regard for other drivers. The Doctor finds himself with nothing to say. He can’t summon anything to mind. Rose’s news has left him literally speechless.

“I think we just passed the Hub,” Riley says after a few minutes of silence. 

Rose’s Doctor actually looks around at their surroundings for the first time in a while. “Oh, damn.” He turns the car around, tires squealing, and drives back. He brings the car to a halt by jamming on the brakes, sending them all rocking forward and then back.

“You’re a maniac,” Riley says angrily. She tears out of the car, the others close behind.

Despite her anger, Riley hesitates at the Hub’s entrance. 

“Are they okay? Should I go over there?”

“They probably ought to be left alone for a moment,” the Doctor says. “They’ll be fine. I imagine he has a few things to say to her.” The Doctor glances behind him and urges her ahead. “Come on.” 

More than a few things, as it turns out. Rose is enduring a bit of a lecture, but because she knows she deserves it, she tries to take it silently.

“You knew when I left you what was happening. You knew that Tony could die. We knew that I might die.” 

“I followed you to make sure that didn’t happen.”

“You risked our baby’s life for this, Rose. You risked your own life. What if you’d died?”

“But I didn’t die! I’m here.”

“How will we get back? We don’t know what effect this will have on an infant.”

“Love, we will make this work. We’ll go home and everything will be fine.”

If determination and stubbornness could achieve something, Rose Tyler would be the ruler of the universe. He halfway believes her himself.

“We could all die,” he says again. The finality of that fact is enormous to him, and he can’t believe she doesn’t see it. He rubs his hands over his face and tries not to yell in frustration and fear.

“The scan says it’s a girl,” Rose offers hesitantly.

He looks at her in disbelief. “What?”

She smiles, trying to coax him into one as well. “We’re having a girl.”

“When did you have a scan done?” he asks slowly.

“Before we came.”

“Before we came. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We were chasing Tony all over the place. I knew you would try and stop me if I said anything.” He doesn’t reply. “I was going to tell you,” she adds.

“When it got too obvious to hide?”

“When I knew you would let me make my own decisions.”

“It stopped being about just you, didn’t it?” he points out reasonably.

“I was going to surprise you. When we got home.”

He sighs. “Only you, Rose Tyler, would do such a foolish thing.”

“It’s Tyler-Smith, thank you very much. And I would risk everything to keep you safe. My Doctor.”

“Oh, Rose.” He gives in to the inevitable and gathers her in his arms. Burying his face in her hair, he holds her tightly and rocks back and forth.

Rose feels the tears come to her eyes now, tears she didn’t dare let go before. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry I frightened you. But if something happened to you I would die.” 

He pulls away, holding her arms. “You wouldn’t, Rose. You’d go on. You are strong and you would go on.”

“No.” On this she is going to be very clear. “No. I couldn’t bear to be back home and not know.”

“You’d rather risk your life by coming over instead?”

“Yes. If that’s what I had to do.”

He shakes his head. “I am so telling your mother when we get home.”

She laughs in relief. “Fine with me.”

Together they enter through the tourist entrance and walk into the Hub.

“It’s about time you got back,” Jack says in extreme annoyance.

“Tony!” Rose flies across the room to embrace her brother.

“I’m okay.”

Rose’s Doctor bends over him. “Are you all right? Are you sure? What happened?”

“We got pulled in to some weird alien place,” Mickey says. “Don’t know where we were. Nothing happened - nobody came out to greet us or anything.”

“You don’t know where you were?”

“I took some pictures,” Tony says.

“What - with a camera?” the Doctor asks in surprise.

“Are you still carrying that around with you?” Rose’s Doctor asks.

“Yeah, I am.” Tony pulls up his sleeve and shows them a watch on his wrist. He clearly feels well pleased with himself.

“I thought you broke yours playing football,” Rose says.

“Dad bought me a new one. We saved the memory and all the data!”

“It’s a watch,” Gwen says, stating the obvious.

“It’s a recording device,” Tony corrects her. “It takes pictures. See?” He presses a button and screen opens up in the air before them, half a meter of pure white light.

“Did you stare at the sun?” Ianto wants to know.

“Hang on.” Tony pushes another button and an image of blue trees appears. Above the trees is a sky of light green.

“Pretty,” Gwen says.

“Definitely alien,” Rose agrees. “And pretty.”

“Impressive,” Jack says in admiration.

“Beats your Vortex Manipulator any day,” Rose’s Doctor agrees.

“Hey, I wouldn’t go that far.”

“When was the last time yours worked properly?”

“It was working just fine until you zapped it with your screwdriver,” Jack reminds him.

“That wasn’t me,” Rose’s Doctor reminds Jack. “I wouldn’t have done that.”

“Yes, you would have,” the Doctor corrects him absently. “This place doesn’t look familiar.” The Doctor shakes his head. “Jack?”

“Nothing comes to mind.”

“No people around?” Rose’s Doctor asks Mickey. “Any noises? Smells? Anything?”

“‘It was like being in an empty room. Nothing, not even animals. We were definitely outside, but that was it. And then we were brought back here.”

“Well, you’re back,” Rose says firmly. “We need to keep you here.”

“If it was the breach acting up again, odds are no one was trying to capture you two for any purpose,” Jack states. “So I guess we’re fine.”

“At least until next time,” Ianto disagrees.

“Well, we’ll take that as it comes. You can put away your blue trees, Tony.”

Tony pushes the button again, and an image of his family appears in place of the alien landscape.

“That’s me and my mum and dad.”

“It’s like an old film projector,” Gwen marvels. “Or a slideshow.”

“More like a picture album,” Rose corrects her. “He’s had it forever. Dad keeps upgrading it for him.”

“They’re the coolest things back home,” Tony adds. 

Images are being whirled through the screen of light, mostly of young boys and girls in school uniforms.

“Does it record in real time?” the Doctor asks interestedly.

“Oh, yeah. Only that takes up more space, so I capture images instead, mostly.” A young girl with a blonde ponytail pops up in front of them, and Tony actually blushes. “That’s just my friend Alice,” he mumbles.

Rose tries not to smile. “That must have gotten there by accident,” she says with a straight face.

“Yeah. Accident.”

“How can it be an accident?” Rose’s Doctor wants to know. “That’s your last birthday party - we were all there at the mansion.” Rose elbows him in the side. “Ow! What was that for?”

Tony scowls and Alice’s picture vanishes. 

“I’ll check the database,” Jack says. “I’ve been Earthbound for a while now - I’ve lost my touch with the alien crowd. Maybe we can find a match for that place.”

Jack, the Doctors, and Rose move to the computer with Mickey.

Gwen and Ianto share a glance, and decide to stay where they are. They’ve never travelled through time and space and wouldn’t know an alien planet unless it was clearly an alien planet.

Tony continues to slide through his pictures.

“What’s it like, going to all those places?” Gwen asks Tony.

“Not so great, honestly. Rose makes it sound so awesome, but it’s kind of scary.”

“You didn’t get to choose where you went, did you?” Ianto grins. “That would make a difference, I imagine.”

“Yeah. She and the Doctor traveled around. Jack was with the Time Agency - I just get sucked around. My mum’s not too happy about it. That’s her,” he adds. The image they’re looking at is of a blonde woman in a pink evening gown. She’s standing beside a man with receding red hair. Next comes an image of Tony, posing with a group of boys.

“My football team. We almost won the tournament last year.”

“Ooh, how lovely,” Gwen says in pleasure, as an image of Rose and her Doctor pop ups. She’s in a white dress with a low neckline and full, frothy skirt. Her blonde hair curls around her shoulders and she’s holding a small bouquet of pink roses. The Doctor is wearing a tuxedo and looking absurdly pleased with himself.

“That’s their wedding day, then.” Gwen knows she is stating the obvious, but she can’t help it.

Tony regards the image. “No,” he says. “That wasn’t.”

“But they’re dressed for -” Gwen is rather rudely interrupted by Jack.

“Incoming Rift!”

“Where is it?” Gwen asks as they hurry to the computer.

“Right here.” Jack starts to point, then realizes the activity has stopped. “It’s gone. What the hell was that?”

A shimmer in the air turns into an opening. A streak of light and a dark figure appears. The figure straightens up and slowly moves out of the light. Rose and Riley both catch their breaths. 

The man is tall, with blond hair and deep blue eyes. He’s dressed in Torchwood field clothes and has a gun strapped across his back. In his hand is a dimension manipulator, set to send him back home if the situation calls for it. If there were such a thing as James Bond in their universe, Rose often tells Simon Lazlow, he would be the closest thing to it.

“It’s Simon,” Riley says in surprise.

Simon stumbles as he steps clear of the energy stream. He is unsteady on his feet. Finally he gives in and bends at the waist, hands on his knees, as he tries to breathe normally.

“That is the most horrible feeling I have ever had.” He struggles to stay upright.

Riley and Rose stand by anxiously. Finally he straightens, and as Jack, Ianto and Gwen get a good look at him for the first time, they all stand up a little straighter and adjust their clothing. Gwen combs through her hair with her fingers and smoothes her shirt over her hips.

“I am never doing that again,” Simon states. “Damn it. How did you manage this all these times?” He shudders and shakes off the worst of it. 

“Right. First off. Your parents are fine,” he tells Rose. “Worried as hell, but they are fine.”

“Are you sure? What are you doing here?” Rose asks anxiously. “My mum...”

“Jackie’s fine, I promise. Worried, but she’s okay. Jackson’s dead.”

“We know. How is Ian?”

“He’ll live.”

“Where’s Jake?” Rose’s Doctor asks. “I thought he was monitoring so he could call up our signal and bring us home.” 

“It’s getting worse back there. A breach opened up again. A spaceship came through. Long, black and shiny? Sound familiar?”

“We were attacked by one not too long ago,” Riley tells him.

“It wasn’t an attack. The ship was pulled through to this world, just the same way Tony was. The breaches are getting wider and more prevalent across our world and this world. They didn’t know what had happened. We made contact.”

“Did they apologize for shooting at us?” Rose’s Doctor asks.

“They weren’t shooting, they were defending what they thought was a terrorist act. They were pulled out of orbit - they had good reason to think they were under threat. They shared some information with us. Apparently they captured images of the humans aiming neutralizing devices at them. Really, John, was it necessary to do it while driving a car? You could have been killed.”

“Thank you!” Riley says. “That’s what I said!”

“We recognized you lot, and I came through. Jake is still dealing with the aliens.”

“Is it still dangerous?” Rose asks. “How did you travel across?”

“You just saw, didn’t you? Not easy and not pleasant, but I’m here. Is Tony?”

“Here, Simon.”

“Well. Hello there.” Simon slowly draws out a compact black box from his backpack. “Stand right there, Tony. Don’t move.”

“What are you doing?” Rose asks sharply.

“Before all this started, Tony, you were at Torchwood with your dad. I was there. You were in one of the labs, and you got bored and walked away.”

“Yeah. I didn’t touch anything, though.”

“You didn’t need to.” Simon does something to his black box and it hums to life. “You entered the field of an alien device that should not have been left out in the open. No one had examined it yet. We didn’t understand what it could do.”

“What kind of device?” Rose’s Doctor asks cautiously. “What does it do?”

“It’s a matter manipulator.”

“Matter manipulator?” both Doctors repeat together. “That’s impossible.”

“Someone get these two a dictionary,” Rose says dryly. “Clearly it’s possible, because Tony’s here.”

“Radioactivity,” Jack says. He’s standing a few feet away, arms folded across his chest. “We won’t have that technology for a few hundred years, but if enough radiation entered Tony, he’d be pulled across time and space on the whim of the universe. And it wouldn’t have to be a large dose of it.”

“Exactly.” Simon holds up his box. “This will deactivate it all and return him to normal.” He holds the box over Tony’s head and runs it down his side.

“Wait a minute, Simon,” Riley interjects. “That doesn’t explain the chaos going on. Or the spaceships. Or the Rift activity here.”

“That’s something else. All we know how to do is fix Tony. And frankly, that’s good enough for your mum,” he adds.

“Take Tony and Rose and go back,” Rose’s Doctor says. “Now. Take them home.”

Rose turns on her husband. Before she can tell him what she thinks of that plan, Simon shakes his head.

“Travel is getting harder, John. It’s wounded three field agents besides Ian, and it’s killed one of us. We need to fix whatever the problem is before we can risk going home again.”

The Hub computer suddenly shrills an alarm. Jack curses. “Gwen, Ianto! Head out and check that out. I’ll go back to that field, Doctor, and we’ll get back to the TARDIS. Then we can close all these the breaches. Mickey -”

But Mickey Smith is packing up the laptop he’s been using. “Something’s going on. I gotta go.”

_“Go?_ You’ve been hanging around here for weeks, and now that stuff is starting to happen you’re going?”

“I’m needed elsewhere, Captain. I’ll be in touch.”

“Be in touch!” Jack parrots.

Mickey is shaking the Doctor’s hand. “See you, Doctor.”

“Take care, Mickey.”

“Rose.” Mickey hugs her briefly. “Take care. You, too,” he adds to her husband. “Simon, Riley, make sure you get home safely. Tell Jake I said hi.”

“Bye, Mickey. Be careful.”

He grins. “Always am.”

“What is the deal with him?” Jack asks irritably once Mickey is gone. The alarms sound again and he doesn’t get a chance to follow that train of thought. “Gwen, Ianto, see what that is and let me know. We’re going to find the TARDIS.” 

The alarm was nothing more than an angry weevil, made angrier by all the action in the Rift. Gwen and Ianto deal with it speedily and then meet Jack and the others in the field. 

Back in the field where Tony and Mickey disappeared, Jack is standing with the Doctor and Riley, examining the scorch marks left by the spaceship. Tony and Simon are standing a few meters away, apparently looking at the area where Tony was standing when he disappeared.

Jack stands back and watches them walk forward. “What happened to you?” he asks. “You were supposed to call and let me know what the problem was.”

“Just a weevil,” Ianto tells him. “We thought we could help.”

Jack shakes his head. “Ianto Jones. Save the universe once and you’re ready to do it again.”

Gwen is gazing beyond them. “What’s wrong with Rose?”

The others swing around to look. Rose is slowly walking up to them, her husband beside her. Neither one looks very happy.

“An...argument,” the Doctor says carefully. “Well, more of a difference of opinion.”

“Rose doesn’t want to go back to the Hub and wait,” Jack says. “The Doct- he - thinks she should go. Which is odd, you’ll admit, because Rose is not the sort to be sent away quietly, if you know what I mean.”

“They argue all the time,” Riley interjects. “This is not an argument. Leave them be.” She heads off to the edge of the field, taking the tracker Ianto’s been holding with her.

“Excuse me.”

She glances back at him. “You’re clearly not a regular. Step back and let me handle this.”

“You’re clearly not from this place.” Ianto takes his tracker back. “You’re holding it upside down. Come this way.”

Gwen can’t hold back a smile. She follows them to make sure a fight doesn’t break out.

Jack faces the Doctor and waits. The Doctor clears his throat.

“This is not the sort of thing I should be involved with. Talking about. Sharing with you.”

“Go on.”

“Rose is going to have a baby. He is not happy about that.”

“Who is this guy?” Jack demands. “Are we sure he’s actually you?”

“Obviously he’s not me, Jack. But no, it’s not that he doesn’t want a...a child. Rose risked her life to come to this world in search of her brother. He thinks she should have stayed home. She knew she was pregnant before he left.”

“Oh.” Jack gazes at the Doctor. “You all right?”

“I’m always all right,” the Doctor says before he can stop himself. 

Jack gives him a look and waits.

“All right, I’m not all right. Not exactly. This day has been eventful.”

“One word for it.”

The Doctor sighs. “I wanted this for her. She thought she wanted to travel with me. Humans need human lives.”

“You didn’t exactly ask her what she wanted, though, did you?”

“We’ve been over that, thanks, Jack.”

“Yeah. I know. Let me check with that other Torchwood guy, see what he knows.”

“Just check with him. Don’t do anything else.”

Jack laughs and walks off.

The Doctor watches Rose approach. “Hello.”

“Hi.”

“Is he still mad at you?”

“Oh, yes. I imagine he’ll be angry until we’re home safe. And then he’ll be angry with himself for not stopping me.”

“If there’s one thing anyone who knows you learns, Rose Tyler, it’s that making you do what you don’t want is impossible.”

“That is a correct use of the word,” Rose’s husband agrees.

“Stop eavesdropping,” she tells him.

He smiles. “Is it eavesdropping if it’s yourself you’re listening to?”

“You’re the not the same person,” Rose reminds him, at the same time the Doctor says, “We are not the same person.”

He shakes his head. “I will be over here, with Captain Jack. Try not to disappear while I’m gone.”

“That’s Tony’s game, not mine.” Rose smiles at him and watches him move away. She’s still feeling guilty and scared, but at least they’re here together to deal with it. She clears her throat and turns to the Doctor.

“I never imagined this. I never thought I’d get back to this world. Never imagined I’d ever speak to you again. Feels strange.”

“Yeah. I thought we closed the breach off for good.”

“We’ll be saying that in twenty years’ time, I bet.”

“I hope not,” the Doctor starts to say, but stops. “You’re having a baby,” he says instead.

She doesn’t blush, but she comes close. “Yeah.”

“I’m very, very happy for you,” he says gently.

She bites her lip and looks up at him. He is so like her husband, and so different, that she can’t help but marvel at it. “Are you?”

“Oh, yes. I am.”

“Thanks.”

“Was it wise, Rose, to come through?”

“Oh, not you, too!”

“Rose! It’s one thing to risk your own life. But a child? It’s already helpless. What if you can’t get back?”

She all but glares at him. “We will get back safely. Nothing will happen to my baby.”

He holds her gaze for a long moment. Yes, it’s the Rose Tyler he remembers. Stubborn as the day is long. He can’t help but laugh and give her a quick hug. He catches his counterpart’s eye across the distance. The message is clear: hands off my wife. The Doctor holds Rose a little tighter before letting her go, just to show him what he thinks of that message.

“Come on,” he says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Let’s go save the world.”

“Doctor,” Jack greets him when the Doctor and Rose head over to the rest of the group. “Some strange readings here.”

“Strange how?”

Simon runs a scanner over a small patch of land. The scanner’s screen remains green and quiet. 

Simon looks up. “Alien energy. Unknown, at this point.”

“Alien?” Rose repeats. “Not the radiation that was manipulating Tony? That was alien, too, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Simon confirms. “But the device is back home. It wasn’t here.”

The Doctor is searching the skies. Smoke is still rising off in the distance. The urge to help is very strong, but he knows worse things will happen if he doesn’t solve this problem.

“I’ll go in the TARDIS - in my ship,” he explains off Simon and Riley’s looks of confusion. “There may be a trail to follow. If nothing else, I can see how many breaches there are.”

“This alien energy may be what pulled Tony and Mickey to that place with the funny trees,” Riley says slowly. 

“One thing at a time,” Jack says grimly. “I’ve got breaches, rifts, aliens and smoke.”

“I’ll be back,” the Doctor says, and heads out past the trees before anyone can offer to go with him.

“Jack?” Rose asks. “Do we need to go help Gwen and Ianto? It sounds pretty bad.”

As one they turn in the direction of the chaos. 

Jack makes a decision. “Let’s go.”

 

The Doctor, in the TARDIS, just as it’s always been. Leaving humans behind while he heads out. Only this time he has every intention of returning. Flying through the time vortex, he catches glimpses of breaches and is horrified at the number. The universe is slowly falling apart, and if it keeps on this way, it will self-destruct.

Briefly, only briefly, does he wonder why these things happen, why it’s always him who has to do the work.

Only briefly, because he’s always known the answer to that.

He’s the only one who can.

 

Several hours later, the city is under control. Jack checks in with Gwen and Ianto, who are handling the chaos at opposite spots in Cardiff. Fires are put out and no aliens were involved. Jack doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

Tony is disappointed. He’s been with Rose the whole time, hoping to slip away and see some action on his own. When Rose was distracted, her husband was there, holding tight to Tony. Now he walks along a quiet street, hands crossed across his chest in a well-known gesture of stubbornness.

“It wasn’t so dangerous out there,” he complains. “I’ve seen stuff like that before.”

“You never have,” Rose’s Doctor corrects him.

“Dad’s taken me to work lots of times.”

“Tony, if you’re choosing now, of all times and places, to turn into a sullen adolescent, I have to ask you to stop. You’ve never been in the field and never will, if it’s up to me.”

“John, I’m not a little kid anymore!”

“I’m not going to be the one to draw you into any more danger,” the Doctor says firmly. “It’s more than my life is worth.”

“If I could die, so could you,” Tony reasons, “so we would stay safe and be careful.”

“I’m not talking about danger. I’m talking about your mum.”

Rose jogs up to them, slightly breathless. “All right. Have you seen him?” she asks, looking around.

He doesn’t ask who she means. He doesn’t have to. “No. Hopefully he’s had some success.”

“Let’s get back to that field,” Jack says briskly, striding up and holstering his weapon. “Rose, there’s a lot of residual smoke in the air. Do you have a handkerchief?”

“No. I’ll try not to breathe in too deeply,” she promises. “But go back to the field?” Rose repeats. “Let’s go back to the Hub.”

“The Doctor will be coming back.”

“He’ll find us wherever we are,” the Doctor says firmly. “Trust me, he’ll have some difficulty returning at the right time anyway.”

“Something is happening out there, Doctor. I want to check it out.”

Rose exchanges a glance with her husband. “We want Tony safe,” she says. “I’d feel better if he were in the Hub.”

Jack gestures with his arm and starts walking to the jeep. Rose skips a few steps and hurries to keep up with him.

“Jack, he’s only a child.”

“Blimey, I wish you’d stop that, Rose! I’m not a kid.”

“You’re such a kid you don’t know how much of a kid you are,” Rose retorts. 

“And I second that,” Simon adds. “There are five of us here. We can keep him safe.”

“If we split up something bad is bound to happen,” Riley adds.

“Torchwood rule number one,” the Doctor tells Jack. “No splitting up.”

“Is it effective?”

“About as much as ‘Don’t wander off’ used to be.”

“That useless, huh?”

“I have to keep him safe,” Rose repeats.

“Whatever you say, Rose,” Jack says, but he drives them back to the field in search of the Doctor.

“I’m going to kill you, Jack.”

“I can tell you right now - that won’t work.”

Rose bites her lip at this reminder of Bad Wolf’s role in Jack’s life. She’s not sorry she brought him back - only that she didn’t do it the right way - but she manages to stay silent. Her husband takes her hand. 

“We’re all here to protect him,” he reminds her. 

“He shouldn’t be anywhere near there,” she says quietly.

“Well, fair’s fair, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“I didn’t want you here, either, but here you are.”

“Love, it’s not the same thing at all. And you know it.”

“Yes, I do. And you do. Will your mum see it that way? I rather doubt it. Your dad’s probably preparing my severance package as we speak.”

“That’s the one thing you don’t have to worry about,” Simon reminds him. “The only way anyone leaves Torchwood is in a body bag.”

The Doctor frowns thoughtfully. “We’ll see about that. Someday.”

 

The Doctor is beside himself. He’s landed the TARDIS back in that field, which, according to his sonic screwdriver, is now absolutely dripping with alien matter. He paces back and forth, coat flaring with each step.

“Inconsiderate,” he mutters to himself. “Not even a note.” He breaks off and whips out his sonic screwdriver again. Testing the readings one more time, he’s forced to admit that it’s not an error. There is some serious alien radiation afoot here. Something is going on.

The jeep pulls up as he’s putting the sonic screwdriver away.

“Where’ve you been?” he demands as they all pile out. “I’ve been waiting for ages for you lot.”

“Bad news?” Jack guesses.

“There are breaches all over the universe! How we’re not all being pulled apart right now I don’t know. I closed up three of them, but I’ll never get them all. We need to trace whatever’s causing them and fix that.”

“”How?”

“We have to find the source. There are traces of something along here, where Tony and Mickey were standing. Tony Tyler, will you stand over here for me?”

Tony takes a step back and shakes his head.

Well, who can blame him? The Doctor smiles reassuringly. “Not to worry, I just want to measure something.”

Tony glances at her sister, who nods encouragingly. Before he can move to where the Doctor wants him, something opens up in the sky.

Jack and Simon turn on it, guns pointed upwards. Rose grabs for Tony and holds on tight.

A black spaceship emerges slowly from a rift, moving eerily through the air. The Doctor, holding his sonic screwdriver, yells a warning.

“Go! Into the TARDIS!” He runs ahead of them and unlocks the door. Jack grabs Riley’s arm. “Come on!” he says to Simon, and hurries inside. Rose and her Doctor follow closely with Tony. 

Jack slams the door as the Doctor runs to the console, madly flipping dials. Nothing is happening. Rose’s Doctor moves to stand beside him, automatically moving controls. Finally they stop and look up, defeated.

“She’s not working,” they say in unison. “Something’s gone wrong outside.”

“This was a phone box,” Riley says, confused. “Wasn’t it? A blue telephone box, and now it’s something else.”

“What is this?” Simon demands. “Where are we?”

“This is my spaceship. It travels through time and space.”

“Through time and space.”

“We’ve told you all that, Simon.”

“No offense, Rose, but I didn’t believe half the things you told me, even if they were true. “

“Start believing,” Rose’s Doctor says briskly. “Come on.”

 

They assemble in the TARDIS’ kitchen.

It’s a very surreal scene to Rose. She spent many companionable hours here with the Doctor, in his previous regeneration as well as the current, brown-suited one. They’d sit and eat biscuits and drink tea, chatting and planning the day’s adventures. 

Jack had been there for a while, too, and she remembers how much fun it had been, the three of them together.

Now she’s back, in the TARDIS, where she never thought she’d be again. And sitting at the table with her is Jack, and the Doctor. And the Doctor.

In her mind, the man she married simply _is._ Over the years he’s acclimated to a human body, agreed to various human traditions and rituals and holidays. He’s taken on a normal human name and lived inside a box with windows and a door. 

She loves him, more than she would have thought possible, and knows she is loved right back. In her mind he doesn’t have a name. She calls him Doctor, at work or when she needs him. The name he took for himself, John Smith, is something to be printed upon a driver’s license, a passport, a tax statement from work. It is not him, and it is a rare occasion indeed when she refers to him that way.

She calls him love because that’s the way she thinks of him now.

If she is honest, it’s also because he’s his own person, and they left the Doctor back in Norway a long time ago.

At least she thought they had. Now they’re here at his kitchen table.

Looking across at him, she catches his eye. He smiles and she smiles back. A few years ago, she might have been experiencing very different feelings. Now she knows that she loves him, too, and always will. How could she not? How could she ever stop?

Meeting her husband’s eye, she knows that he understands.

The TARDIS requires a lot more explaining for Simon and Riley. The Doctor has pressing concerns, and he quickly grows impatient with these Torchwood people from a parallel world.

“Right. Once more, this ship exists in two realities. The outside, the box, exists in the real world. The interior exists in the relative world.”

“I have a Ph.D in physics,” Simon tells him. “That’s impossible.”

“Not to Time Lords,” the two Time Lords present say at the same time.

“This kitchen is here because we want it,” Rose tries to explain. “It kind of goes back to that relative world when we don’t, yeah? The TARDIS expands and contracts as it needs to. There’s a whole world in here.”

Riley glances at the kitchen door.

“There is,” Rose assures her. “We just can’t see them all because they’re not all needed.”

“TARDIS,” Simon repeats. “And it travels through time and space.”

“Yes,” the Doctor says briskly. “And until we can move from here, we’re stuck.”

Rose stands up and goes to the refrigerator. She’s reminded that she’s pregnant by the sudden, sharp sense of hunger. 

“Who’s hungry? Tony? It’s been ages since we ate anything.”

She pulls food out of the refrigerator, silently thanking the TARDIS for having readymade meals waiting for her on a tray.

“We’re not at a buffet here,” Simon says in annoyance. “We’re in a spaceship that can move through time and space but can’t leave an open field.”

“Obviously, it could, under normal circumstances. The aliens have erected some sort of forcefield.” The Doctor is trying not to take this personally.

Rose can’t overlook the sensation of hunger. “We have chicken and ham,” she reports. “Here.” She hands the tray to her husband, who shoves it into the oven and starts the warming process. It’s ready before Rose has poured out water for everyone.

“Back to the topic at hand.” Rose’s Doctor hands her a knife, takes another for himself, and they start carving up the ham and chicken.

“If the aliens out there are the ones who nabbed Tony and Mickey, then they’re back for a purpose. If they’re the same ones that went to Torchwood to complain about us, that was also for a purpose. They’re able to go back and forth between the worlds.” He gestures back and forth with his knife, causing Jack to slide back in his chair.

“The breaches are being caused by them,” the Doctor says.

Rose places plates down. “If they followed us through, maybe they’re trying to contact this world.”

“It’s possible,” Rose’s Doctor agrees. “Very possible.” He sets down a platter full of food on the table. He’s cut everything into small, bite-size pieces. 

“To what end?” Jack asks skeptically. “Visiting aliens usually mean trouble. No offense, Doctor.”

“None take,” the Doctors chorus. 

As soon as they’re done eating, the Doctor goes back to the console room. Switching on his monitor, he looks at what’s happening outside. 

Simon is standing close by. “That’s them,” he says. “The aliens who came to Torchwood.”

“And that is the ship that was following us,” Riley says. “What’s it doing?”

“Hovering,” the Doctor says grimly. He tries the TARDIS controls again. They're unresponsive. “They’re emitting some sort of signal. Its interfering with the TARDIS. We can’t dematerialize safely from here.” The Doctor stares hard at the monitor. “We’re trapped.”

“That’s bad, then,” Rose says quietly.

“Not for long. If we stay here long enough we can collect the energy they’re sending out, conserve it and then send it back to them. That might break the forcefield and knock them back out of the sky.”

“But why are they doing this?” Riley asks. “Isn’t that the obvious question?”

“The Sycorax wanted to take over the world,” Jack reminds them. “Not to mention the Racnoss and a few other alien species.”

“Yeah, we have that problem, too,” Riley says.

The Doctor is moving his hands over the controls, plotting his course. “We can ask them when we break out of here.”

“Is that gonna take a while?” Tony asks. 

Jack pats his shoulder. “Come on, kid. I’ll show you the library.”

“I don’t really feel like reading, thanks.”

“We’ll probably find a video game system there,” Rose’s Doctor tells him. “Come on.”

“Excellent.” Simon follows Jack and the Doctor. After a moment, Riley sigh and follows.

“Down that corridor,” the Doctor tells her. “Four doors down, turn left and then a sharp right.”

“How big is this police box?” she asks.

“As big as relative space,” he says cheerfully, and goes back to typing in commands.

The script is still in Gallifreyan, and Rose doesn’t bother to even watch him anymore. The Gallifreyan language is one she will never master.

“This just gets weirder and weirder, doesn’t it?” She boosts herself up onto the captain’s chair and can’t stop herself from a quick “Ouch.”

He swings around. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, thanks. I hurt my knee years back, and I think I turned it when we were running out there.”

“Will it be okay? Shall I take a look?”

She smiles and shakes her head. “No, I’m okay.”

He finishes his work and sits beside her, with an eye out for jealous husbands. That one seems a bit unpredictable, and he’d hate to test that theory by angering him over Rose.

Rose has changed since he last saw her. Her hair is a lot longer, he notes, and she looks as young as before, which should be impossible, given the rate at which humans age, but as she’s pointed out several times recently, perhaps he doesn’t understand what impossible really means.

She used to wear lots of black eyeliner and mascara. Now her makeup is softer and lighter. Instead of big silver hoops, there are small stones in her ears. Around her neck is a silver chain. In the hollow of her throat rests a small circle. It looks like diamonds, something she’s never worn before, not that he can remember. But as he looks a bit closer, the round diamonds seem to blink in the light of the console room, turning into tiny stars for a brief moment.

The Doctor blinks. “Rose, where did you get this?”

“Doctor, we have to get out of here. I need to send Tony home. If things are getting worse here, they must be terrible at home.”

“As soon as we can get free we'll take care of everything,” he assures her.

“All of us, yeah? Not just you, playing the hero and risking your life?”

“When have I ever played the hero?”

She doesn’t answer, and he is forced to smile. “Maybe a few times,” he relents. “But only when I absolutely had to.”

She sighs. “I know.”


	4. Chapter 4

Time stands still in the TARDIS. The Doctor is frustrated that he can’t move. The aliens aren’t responding.

“Not enough energy collected,” reports his human double from beside the console, where he’s been monitoring the system they’ve rigged together.

“What do you think this is? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“They want us for something.”

“Pleasant thought.” The Doctor slides out from beneath the grating, where he’d been trying to force controls to do his bidding without success.

“Did it work?” Rose’s voice brings their heads around.

“Not yet,” her husband says.

“Did you say that they want us for something? Who wants us for something?”

“I was speculating, Rose. Conjecturing, if you will.”

“You mean aliens. Why is it always aliens?” she demands.

The two Doctors open their mouths and then stop at the same time. It’s always aliens because that’s how it is, but they both know she would not be happy with that answer.

“Gelth and Daleks and Cybermen,” she says, more to herself than to them. 

“Don’t forget the Sycorax,” the Doctor reminds her.

She glares at him.

“Er, sorry.”

“Rose, this is a mere setback. We’ll take care of this and be home before you know it.”

Rose stares at her husband. “We can’t move. The TARDIS is stuck here. The _TARDIS.”_

“Yes, well, we’ll be unstuck any moment.”

Rose turns to the Doctor. He is forced to shrug. “We may as well sit back. I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere any time soon.”

 

The Doctor has been in many strange situations in his life. Rose Tyler is back on his TARDIS, but with a husband and coworkers in tow. If he sat around for a year, he could not have dreamed up this scenario. Once again, he ponders the universe that likes to cause him pain.

Although, it’s not as painful as it was. He will always love Rose, will always regret losing her. Seeing her with people who care about her, knowing that she still has Jackie, well, that’s not so bad.

Watching the product of a biological meta-crisis, that’s something else. His family is long gone. This is the closest he’s come to another Time Lord since he watched the Master die on the _Valiant._ Not that he considers that one family, or a full-fledged Time Lord. He’s half human. Half Donna.

The pain of losing Donna is greater than the pain of losing Rose. Rose is still herself, still retains her memories of him. He may have treated her poorly at the end, but her experiences with him made her life better, and she knows it. He knows it.

Donna is lost to him, and the unfairness of that will never leave him. Even if he did it to save her life, it’s still so unfair. She was brilliant, and now she’s gone.

He wishes he had kept traveling, and not stopped at Torchwood when these disturbances first began. He might have avoided Tony Tyler entirely, might not have been put in this position.

Oh, well. What fun would life be, without these unexpected twists and turns?

The humans have scattered. Tony was tired, and Rose sent him to a bedroom to take a nap. Riley and Simon soon followed. Rose and...that one left the console room some time ago. He doesn’t know if it was to find a place to sleep or go play a video game in the library. He leaves them all alone, knowing from experience that sleep-deprived humans are rubbish.

He also understands that pregnant females require more sleep. The notion of Rose with a child makes him smile. If he ever doubted that he did the right thing, he’s sure of it now.

 

 

Rose awakens slowly. The hum of the TARDIS is familiar and comforting and also incredibly alien. Her husband is still sleeping beside her. It’s something that never would have happened before, Rose and the Doctor sleeping in the same bed in the TARDIS. The thought makes her smile. 

Rose stretches a bit and brings the blanket up to cover her legs. She doesn’t move any more for fear of waking him. Tony is asleep in the next room. She doesn’t think about how she knows that, only that she does. The TARDIS is telepathic, she recalls, and she doesn’t fight the knowledge it gives her.

She knows that somewhere on this ship, on some dimension, waiting for her, is the room she used to inhabit when they were traveling together. She can picture it in her mind: pink walls, hot pink bedspread, dressing table littered with cosmetics and costume jewelry. Her clothes are still there, hoodies and trainers and jeans. Pictures of their travels, souvenirs and all the odds and ends she liked to keep with her.

They’re memories of a lifetime ago and more, belonging to a girl who no longer exists. If she wanted to, she could find that room right now.

She knows her husband could have brought them to that room last night.

Neither of them wanted that. It’s a time long gone, and they’ve moved beyond it, so far beyond it that to try and go back would defeat their entire life together. The Doctor she traveled with is not the one she married, and even now, trying to make sense of that gives her a headache.

The TARDIS seems to hum a little louder, and Rose looks up. Her husband is leaning up on one elbow.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I was just thinking.”

“About what?” He lies back down and she cuddles next to him, realizing that she was cold only when confronted with the heat of his body.

“It’s weird, isn’t it, being here? Being here again. Like everything’s gone all wrong.”

“It has gone all wrong,” he points out. “We’re stuck here and none of us have got a clue. That is very, very wrong.”

“What are we going to do?” she whispers. “We’ve faced monsters and aliens and demons...none of that was like this. We were pulled across to this world and we weren’t even trying to come here.”

“Well, we were at first,” he points out fairly. “But only because your brother was here. I wasn’t trying to get back here. Were you?” he asks after a beat.

She moves closer to him, breathing in his scent and closing her eyes. “No. But here we are, yeah? On the TARDIS.”

“Rose, we weren’t looking for him. But now that he’s here he can help us. This universe stands to lose as much as ours if these breaches or rifts aren’t closed up.”

“I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want us to get hurt.”

“How can we hurt him? We did what he wanted, didn’t we? He pulled our strings and we danced his tune.”

“Stop it, love. That’s not what it was.”

“It was.”

“You promised you’d stop that. Don’t bait him and hurt him.”

“I’ll try to stop,” he says, not really meaning it.

She stretches up to kiss him. It’s a bit hard to do in the room’s darkness, but she aims as best she can and kisses his cheek. He moves his head to reach her lips.

“I love you,” she whispers. 

“Love you too, Rose Tyler.” 

They talk in whispers for a while longer, serious things and frightening things and silly nonsense, and Rose eventually falls back asleep.

He wishes he could, but he doesn’t.

He was the Doctor, once, on this ship, traveling through time and space with just a teenage girl for a companion. Such a long, long time ago. And then they landed on Earth, in London, so she could go to school. The beginning of the end, he thinks now. They brought on new companions, and discovered people and places, and lost and gained companions.

He lost that girl, his Susan, lost her to another man. Lost and found more companions. Lost his friends and family. Lost his planet. Found Rose. Lost Rose. Found her again, at the last. Got to keep her, this time. 

He’s not an idiot, even if he is human. He has Rose because she chose him in this human form, over the Doctor who was and still is a proper Time Lord.

There is an irony in life that he doesn’t always understand, but he can appreciate.

This was his TARDIS. He remembers flying it, living in it, repairing it. He regenerated here, twice. Once after the Time War, once after he drew the time vortex from Rose to save her life. Wandering the halls, he feels the familiarity of the TARDIS. The humming speaks to him, reaches his mind in a way that has been empty for a long time now.

And even though it was his ship, he feels like a stranger, trespassing in someone else’s home.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

Turning, he sees the Doctor, the proper Doctor, leaning against a wall, arms crossed. He’s still wearing the brown suit, although his tie is gone and the jacket unbuttoned.

“I’m human but I don’t sleep the night away.” He stops a few feet away and shoves his hands in his pockets. “What are you up to?”

“Jack and I were playing cards for a bit. He got a call from one of his team.”

“How are they doing?”

“Things are under control.”

“That’s good.”

The Doctor inclines his head. “Want to sit?”

They go to the observatory. In relative space it’s easy to sit under the stars, a telescope at your side. It’s dark but for the stars above. It’s very quiet there, and crickets chirp off in the distance.

“I haven’t looked at the stars for a long time,” he says without thinking. “Not these stars.”

“Are they different? Back on your world?”

“Some of them. You get used to it, after a bit. Rose says it was impossible at first, to remember events that hadn’t happened or turned out differently.”

“We’re still stuck here. I don’t know what’s causing it.”

“As holidays go, I’ve had better. What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know.” And that is a sobering admission for the Doctor to make. “I’ve got all these people on board, and I have no idea what I’m facing.”

“It’s night now. In the morning we’ll be able to see outside and take action.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

The Doctor eyes him through the darkness. “You used to taking action? Are you working for Torchwood?”

“I am.” Rose’s Doctor leans back. They’re sitting on the ground and he rests on his elbows, legs kicked out carelessly in front of him. “It’s a challenge. Not a bad thing to do, if you have to. More fun than UNIT, I’ll give it that.”

The Doctor smiles faintly. “Good old UNIT. Did you find a fancy car to drive around in?”

He’s surprised into laughter. “No. Haven’t thought of Bessie in a while.”

“She was a good car, wasn’t she?” The Doctor is sitting up, back straight. His hands are loosely clasped in his lap. “Everything comes to an end, doesn’t it?”

“Some things are meant to.”

“What’s it like, being human?”

“You’ve been human before.”

“That doesn’t count. I didn’t know I’d been anything else before.”

“It is a bit different,” he allows. “It’s hard, sometimes, watching seconds tick away, counting down to the end.”

The Doctor clears his throat uncomfortably.

“It wasn’t your fault. So you sent all your regeneration energy into that hand, and Donna touched it. I wouldn’t be here at all if it hadn’t happened.”

“Yes. Still.”

“It’s not always fun and it’s not always easy. But it is sometimes. Don’t worry about me. Don’t pity me, certainly.” He pauses. “Where is she? What happened to her?”

The Doctor sighs and looks up at the stars. “There’d never been a human-Time Lord biological meta-crisis. Not before, not since.”

He is very still, looking up at the same stars. “Did she live?” he asks quietly.

“Yes! She lived. She lives still.”

“But she doesn’t remember, does she? It would have killed her.”

“I did what I could. She didn’t want me to.” The Doctor’s voice is dangerously close to cracking, and he stops to clear his throat. “I couldn’t watch her die.”

“Where is she?”

“In Chiswick, with her mother and Wilf. Living out her life, I hope.”

Rose’s Doctor sighs. “I’d suspected that’s what happened. She was brilliant, wasn’t she? It’s not fair, how things turned out.”

“No. It wasn’t. But she’s alive.”

“Sometimes there’s more to life than being alive.”

The Doctor looks down at his hands. “I did what I had to.”

“There’s more to life than that, too.”

Is it awkward for them, sharing the same memories and experiences, being able to sense what the other is thinking and feeling?

It is and it isn’t, because they both want the same things, and they both know that they’re not meant to have everything they want. They don’t mention Rose, because there’s nothing more to say. Choices were made and consequences were lived with, and it’s a little late now to go changing things around.

“So when did you start going by John Smith?”

“I’m human. Seemed the thing to do. Plus, turns out when you have to do paperwork for a new job, you need documents and..stuff. All this stuff you have to file away and carry in your wallet and show to people. Times have changed since we worked for UNIT, way back when. But I’m still the Doctor. Except for Tony. He didn’t like going in for checkups, and if you even said the word doctor he’d have panic attacks. Strange little boy. Jackie for a mum, well, not his fault, is it? So I let him call me John.”

“He’s a good kid. Pete must be a good influence.”

“He is. Jackie’s a good mum, to be honest.”

The Doctor raises his eyebrows, conveying astonishment and disbelief.

Rose’s husband squirms a bit. “She is. Don’t tell anyone I said so. But she is.”

The Doctor looks up at the sky. “I’m not surprised. She did a good job with Rose, didn’t she?”

Rose’s husband stands up. “Let’s go break away from whatever’s holding us here. I’m ready to go fix the universe.”

This is easier said than done. When Rose joins them in the console room some time later, rested and cleaned up, they’re still tinkering with the TARDIS’ controls.

“How’s it going?” Rose asks.

“It’s not,” the Doctor says, trying to force some mechanical parts to do his bidding near the floor.

“Are we still trapped?”

“Trapped or stuck,” her husband says, “depending on your point of view.”

“I told you,” the Doctor says, “‘stuck’ sounds purely incidental, like we happened upon a place and couldn’t move. ‘Trapped’ implies a sinister connection.”

“Which one are we using?” Rose can’t help asking, trying not to grin.

“Trapped,” her husband says definitely, while the Doctor states, “Stuck. But only for a moment.”

“As you also said a few times before. And yet we’re still here, trapped and stuck and not moving.”

He’s barely finished talking when the TARDIS lurches to the side.

“They’ve released us!” the Doctor says, running to the monitor.

“You’ve made that pronouncement five times before so far,” Rose’s Doctor murmurs. 

“Shut up and come over here. Look at this.”

Rose waits patiently while they both slide their glasses onto their noses. Identical looks of intense concentration appear on their faces.

“They’ve released us,” Rose’s Doctor confirms.

“Yes, but why?” the Doctor demands.

Jack and Simon appear, neck and neck, in the console room.

“Did you feel that?” Jack demands. “They’ve done something.”

“Let’s go.” Simon gestures to Rose and her Doctor. “Let’s take care of this.” 

“Stay here!” Rose tells Tony, who’s followed with Riley. “Do not come out!”

The tone of her voice is absolute. Tony doesn’t argue with her this time.

“Hit them with their energy,” Rose’s Doctor says. “If they’re out there it may buy us some time.”

“When did you start talking like an action hero from a B movie?” But the Doctor activates the energy he’s been conserving.

“Got them!” He sends a blast out, and then the TARDIS doors open.

“Here we go!” Jack calls, and heads out with his gun drawn.

“No guns!” the Doctor shouts after him. “Honestly, you humans just don’t listen!”

Riley and Simon have their guns drawn, too. 

“No offense, Doctor,” Riley tells him, “but it’s better safe than dead.”

The spaceship has rocketed back up in the air. It hangs there a moment before slowing turning around and moving upwards. They watch as it disappears through the clouds.

“Just like that?” Rose’s Doctor sounds disappointed.

“It’s gone!” Jack yells.

“There’s a perimeter here,” Riley calls. “Where they were holding us in. Look, it’s all around.”

“What caused it?” Simon starts to walk around the circle. 

“This was a massive ship,” Riley says in admiration. “Think of the firepower.”

“Think of where it got to,” Rose’s husband says slowly. “Where were they heading?”

“It could be another part of Cardiff,” Jack says. “Or London.”

“It might be another world entirely. This universe or yours.” The Doctor frowns. “We need to follow them. Rose, get Tony. I think I can get you all back home and close the breaches before those aliens return.”

“What? We’re not leaving - not until we know everything is safe.” Simon shoulders his weapon. “If we go home we may only get pulled back - now that Tony’s clean we don’t know what’s causing this.”

“I’ve seen what the problem is. I can correct it now. You don’t have to be here.”

“No, we don’t. But since we are here, we’ll help you. That way we’ll avoid worrying about what’s going on over here.”

“Simon is right,” Rose’s Doctor says decisively. He meets the Doctor’s gaze. “Don’t make this about yourself. We’re here and you can use our help. Now that we’re here we’ll do what we can.” 

“You wanted her to go home! Now I’m offering you the chance and you won’t take it?”

“Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do. Don’t tell me what’s the best thing for my wife.” He emphasizes the last two words. “I know what stands to happen if we head home on our merry way and disaster strikes here. You may not close the breaches in time. Something else may come through. You may die and have regeneration sickness and be picked off by an angry alien. We stay.”

“This is not about me,” Rose says. “Or Tony. He’s safe in the TARDIS, yeah? So let’s take care of this and get it done.”

“Agreed,” her husband says briskly, and moves off to the perimeter. Simon and Riley follow, each pulling out different pieces of equipment.

Jack stands there, hesitating. This is his Rose and his Doctor, and they shouldn’t be arguing. “Guys, look, we’re here, like the Doctor said. We can do this together and heal the breaches.”

“It may get incredibly dangerous.”

“When has that ever stopped us?” Rose demands. “Doctor, what’s come over you? We may not have time to argue over this.”

Jack’s cell phone rings, and he reaches for it. Glancing at their faces, he walks away.

“Talk to me Gwen, what’s going on?”

“Rose, you’re pregnant. You need to get back home safely.”

“Don’t you make this about me!” she says again.

“You’ve been saying all along that you need to get your brother home. Are you changing your mind now? If your baby’s safety isn’t important, what about his?” The Doctor can’t quite stop the words from coming out of his mouth, but at the same time there is a rising anger in him that he can’t control. It’s anger at himself, for putting Rose in this situation in the first place, back on the beach with his double. And anger at Rose and that double, for coming here and putting themselves in danger. And for being forced to see what he’s given up, what he gave up on that beach, so they could have a chance at a life together.

“You made it about yourself the moment you came through knowing you were having a baby. You’re putting us all in greater danger because of the need to protect you.”

“How dare you,” Rose breathes. “Protect me. Protect me? If anyone can protect themselves, it’s me.”

“How dare I what? Point out how dangerous this may become? You’re all humans - I have a chance at doing what’s needed and surviving.”

She takes a deep, deep breath. She can see her husband, obviously monitoring the two of them but working at the same time. How she loves that man.

She loves this one, too, standing in front of her in brown pinstripes and a look of great upset on his face. She knows why he’s so upset with her, knows that he must be feeling things about her return that he can’t admit to now. But she also knows that he’s out of line, and an unreasonable anger has been building within her.

Rose did not intend to have this conversation with the Doctor. It’s hardly the time or the place. “You are an arrogant, pompous Time Lord,” she hears herself say. They are words her husband has used hundreds of times, but she’s horrified to hear them come out of her mouth. At the same time, it’s a relief to finally say them. She could almost laugh at the look of astonishment on his face.

“I understand why you did it. I get it. It doesn’t mean that I can forget it. You took away my right to choose for myself. You think it’s your job to save the universe, and it’s not.”

That accusation stings. “You know that’s not what I think. I’m the only one who can fix things sometimes. That’s all.”

“That’s not all. How can you say that’s all? We walked into places not knowing what was happening. We never saw what could happen. Queen Victoria created Torchwood because of us!” She shakes her head. “Maybe I’d have gotten tired of traveling with you. I never got the chance to decide on my own.”

He looks away. “I saw what the future would be like if you stayed with me. It was better this way.”

“I saw what the future would be like, too! Better? For who? Not me! Not him!”

“You’re human! He’s human! He’s human and he’s me and he was the best chance you had to be happy. He could give you what I couldn’t. You deserved to be happy, Rose.”

“I deserved to choose for myself. If I wanted to stay with you, I should have been able to. If I wanted to leave I should have left. You played with our lives like we were paper dolls.”

“Rose...”

“It worked. He and I made it worked. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fun but we did it. Do you know why I even bothered? Because he loved me. He told me that he loved me, and that’s how I knew that he wasn’t you. Because you never loved me, did you? A man who loved me would never have left me behind.”

The anger on his face isn’t new to her. She’s just never seen it directed at her before. He grabs her arms, pulls her up on her toes.

“I’m not a man, Rose! I never was!”

Before Rose can manage to reply, a sharp crack of sound is heard. They jerk around, the Doctor’s hands frozen on her arms.

Rose’s Doctor, starting to walk towards them to put a stop to their argument and remove the Doctor’s hands from Rose, halts in his tracks. The others have frozen in place.

Out of the beam of energy emerge two small figures, one slightly taller than the other. They walk forward in perfect unison.

Rose’s heart skips a beat. “No,” she whispers.

The figures come closer. As if in a dream, Rose backs away from the Doctor. His hands fall to his sides. Rose moves slowly, feeling like she’s underwater. She quickens her pace the closer she gets.

Her husband, by sharp contrast, simply falls to his knees.

Looking at him, the Doctor frowns in confusion. The look on his face is one of sheer despair, utter helplessness. What is causing that look?

The two small figures come closer and turn into two small humans. They run to Rose, who kneels down on the ground and gathers them in an embrace.

“Mummy!”

“What happened? How did you get here? Are you hurt?” Rose runs her hands over her children’s faces, over their hair, looking for injuries. “What’s happened?”

Her husband suddenly lurches into action. Simon has already started to hold out the black box that deactivated the radiation within Tony. Rose’s Doctor snatches it out of his hand and runs it over the children’s heads and down their arms and legs.

“Nothing,” he says to Simon, dropping the box. “No sign of radiation.”

Rose is still kneeling on the ground, looking up at him with tears running down her face.

He can only shake his head slowly. “What’s happening?” he asks her. “What’s happening here?”

“Daddy!” the small girl cries happily. “There you are!” She holds her arms up to him. He holds his own arms out, and lifts her up against his chest. She gives him an exuberant kiss on the cheek, which he returns mechanically. His eyes are on Rose, who is pale and looking ready to faint.

“These are your children?” Jack asks. He sounds surprised, like it’s something he hasn’t imagined before. Maybe he never has. 

Neither Rose or her husband answer him. She is holding on tightly, shaking too hard to stand up. Her Doctor kneels down beside her, gently helping her stand up.

“Hi, Daddy,” the small boy says cheerfully. “We were with Granny, but now we’re here. And we weren’t even wishing to see you!”

“But it’s bad!” his smaller sister interjects, “because Granny didn’t want us to go.”

“It’s all right,” he says, voice shaking only a little. “We’re together now.”

Only he knows what this means. The chances of getting them all home safely have just decreased by two.

“This is bad,” Rose says, so softly that only he can hear her. “This is very, very bad.”

Their eyes meet, and he swallows hard. He could tell her that this is why he wanted to her remain at home, these two small children that they’re holding in their arms right now. She was supposed to stay home and protect them.

“I know,” is all he says. “I know.”

The Doctor has been struck dumb the past few moments. Such an occurrence is rare for him, and yet it’s happening a lot lately. Obviously seeing Rose again is wonderful, but also full of unexpected twists and turns. Not to mention this human-Time Lord male who looks like him and sounds almost like him and has Rose. The Doctor pushes aside the feelings of jealousy, happiness, and general confusion and scans the skies.

“I don’t know where they came from,” he says, “but there’s a chance something else may happen out here.”

Fear of something else - another “traveling” event, another alien attack, anything, really, at this point - drives them back into the TARDIS. Tony is waiting in the console room and greets his niece and nephew with some surprise.

“How’d they get here? Did they touch a matter manipulator, too?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rose tells him shortly. “No. They weren’t at Torchwood.” She is tired and feeling very weak. Her husband guides her to the captain’s seat and sits her down.

“Tony, bring Rose some water.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s thirsty,” he says impatiently. Now is not the time to announce Rose’s pregnancy to Tony or the children. 

Tony heaves a sigh but goes to the kitchen for a glass of water.

“Are you feeling all right?” Rose’s Doctor asks her. “You’re very pale.” 

“I’m all right,” she says. “Just had a shock, that’s all.” She shudders uncontrollably. 

“They’re here. It will be all right.”

The Doctor joins them, standing to the other side of Rose. She is slightly disoriented by the sight of identical Doctors, both staring at her with concern. Tony appears with the water and she gratefully takes a big swallow.

Her children have been walking around the console room, and now they’re both examining the control panel.

“How come there aren’t proper knobs and levers?” Rose’s son wants to know.

“What do you do with that mallet?” his sister asks Rose. “Is it meant to be there? Shouldn’t there be something else there?”

The Doctor clears his throat, unaccountably put out at having his beloved ship questioned by such tiny people. “Everything functions very well. This ship is rather old, and after a few years it gets hard to find the proper parts.”

The little girl finishes examining the control panel and moves to the computer monitor. The data on the screen is in Gallifreyan. She examines the script seriously, her head tipped to the side. She stares at it for so long that the Doctor glances uncertainly at Rose.

“Is she all right?”

“She likes to read,” Rose’s Doctor tells him.

“That’s not translated.”

Rose looks at the screen and nods. “It never was, was it?”

“This is the TARDIS,” the Doctor feels compelled to explain to the children. “It’s my ship. It travels through space and time.”

They nod seriously. Despite the envy and confusion and love he’s feeling, he can’t help but admire them standing there, so small and earnest. 

The Doctor sighs and stares down at the two children. “So who are you? What shall we call you?”

“My name’s Jack.”

“Jack?” 

“Jack.”

“Well.” Captain Jack Harkness can’t help but smile. “Your parents named you after me, did they?”

“Yes,” Rose says, at the same moment that her husband says, “Absolutely not.”

They glare at each other.

“He’s named for Jackie,” Rose’s husband says firmly.

“Stop it. He is not.”

“He is, too.”

“Are you Captain Jack? My mum tells us stories about you sometimes.”

“I am the one and only,” Jack assures this small person. “Ask me anything.”

“No,” Rose’s husband says hastily. “No, no, no, do not ask him anything. Jack, you are not to tell him anything. I forbid it.”

The Doctor shakes his head. “Really, Rose, I would have expected more from you. Of all the available names in the universe...”

“Stop it,” she tells him. 

“Nice to meet you, Jack,” the Doctor tells him.

The boy has light brown hair that will probably darken as he gets older. It looks as wild as his father’s. He’s wearing jeans and trainers, and a shirt with a movie camera logo on the pocket. His face is free of freckles. Apart from that fact, he looks very much like his father.

He therefore looks very much like the Doctor, and this makes the Doctor slightly nervous.

The little girl has hair a pretty shade of blonde not unlike her mother’s. It’s pulled back in a ponytail, held in place by a hot pink satin band, identical to the one in Rose’s hair. She’s also wearing jeans and trainers and a pink t-shirt. It’s what is probably normal children’s clothing for their world. The Doctor will be the first to admit that children’s fashions, on any world, is not a subject in which he takes much of an interest. 

He does take notice of the fact that the pretty little girl doesn’t have freckles, either, and they both have brown eyes like their parents.

“And what’s your name?” Jack asks the small girl.

“Lily. I’m three.”

“Lily?” the Doctor can’t resist asking. He never heard Rose complain about her name when they were together, but he would not have thought she’d name a child for a flower.

Of course, he would not have thought she’d ever name a child for Jack Harkness, either.

“We agreed on Lianne,” Rose says, shooting a look at her husband. “Both of us, before she was born.”

“We did,” her husband says agreeably, the very image of cooperation. “We did agree.”

“So are you Lily or Lianne?” Jack asks her with a grin.

“The man waits until I’m asleep after two days of labor and registers her as Lily-Rose,” Rose continues. After so long it’s no longer an issue for her, not really, but she still likes to bring it up every now and again.

Her husband is unrepentant. “I fancied a flower garden,” is all he will say.

“Please,” Riley says, “if you wish to maintain harmony, Doctor and Captain Jack, you will drop this subject. She ought to have been Lianne and was named Lily-Rose instead.”

Rose’s Doctor frowns at her. “Lily-Rose is a much prettier name.”

“But not the one we chose,” Rose reminds him. 

“How come you look like my dad?” Jack asks abruptly. He’s heard the name argument once or twice before.

“Do I?” the Doctor asks, trying hard to be casual.

“Yes.”

The three adults are silent. Jack and Riley and Simon are still there, and they all wear varying expressions of amusement as they wait for the answer. Tony looks like he’d like the answer, too.

“We told you how I traveled with the Doctor,” Rose says finally. “A long time ago.”

“Daddy is the Doctor.”

“Yes. Yes, he is. He was from another place, remember?”

“Daddy is a Time Lord from Gallifrey,” Jack says promptly. His father beams with pride.

“And he became human because he loved you,” Lily adds, obviously repeating a well-loved part of the story.

“Yes. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. _This_ is the Doctor.”

“He’s not daddy.”

“No. There was a....something happened and the Doctor became two...things happened and he made this hand...well, when it was done there were two people. Your dad and the Doctor. Your dad’s the human part.”

“He’s Daddy’s father?”

“No!” Rose and the Doctors all say hastily. “Not like that.”

“Are you the same?”

“Not really. Just a bit, maybe.” The Doctor runs his hand through his hair. The gesture is familiar, because both children turn to look at their father, who is at the moment doing the very same thing. Caught, he drops his hand and tries to smile cheerfully.

“Nope, not the same,” he confirms.

The children are clearly unconvinced, and continue to regard the Doctor with open suspicion.

“Where were you before you came to your mum and dad?” Simon asks, moving over to them. “What happened back home? How did you get here?”

“Hi, Uncle Simon!” the small Jack says cheerfully. 

“I’m his godfather,” Simon feels compelled to explain to Jack and the Doctor, the only ones who wouldn’t know this.

“They didn’t want to name him after you?” Jack can’t help asking.

“He is named for Jackie,” Rose’s Doctor says again. “Now tell us what happened, Jack.”

“We were playing at Granny’s. Lily was on the swings and I was pushing her. Then Granny said I wasn’t supposed to push her into the swing’s pole and made me stop.”

“You know you’re not supposed to do that,” Rose says. “If she hits the pole she’ll get hurt.”

“That’s what Granny said, so she told me to go play and leave Lily alone.”

“You weren’t playing nice with me,” Lily says.

“So I went on the slide and then a light came. Granny was screaming.”

“Was Granny hurt?” he asks hesitantly.

“No. She was yelling for granddad, but I don’t know if he heard her.”

“If he was anywhere in the surrounding area, he heard Jackie scream,” the Doctor murmurs to Jack.

“And then there was a light!” Lily says excitedly. “It was bright and it felt hot and we didn’t like it. But then we came here and we saw you.”

“A transmat?” Rose suggests.

“Another breach in the universe,” the Doctor says. Moving to the controls, he starts to set a course for one of those breaches. “We’ll close them up and get you back home.”

“How many breaches did you see out there?” Rose’s Doctor asks.

The Doctor raises his eyes to his. “Too many to count. It may not work.”

Rose’s Doctor nods briskly. “Let’s go.”

 

Rose’s first instinct is to tend to her children. She’s still not feeling well, and it shows. Riley and Simon take the kids into the TARDIS library. Jack has Tony show him the recording device that Tony wears on his wrist, and the Doctor stays in the console room to follow the breaches.

Rose’s Doctor exchanges a glance with him and guides Rose to the room they slept in the night before. Closing the door, he turns to her. She can sense the fear and worry coming from him. Trying to ease the tension, she offers him a hopeful smile.

“We’re getting more than we bargained for lately, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are. I’ve been meaning to ask you, as a matter of fact.” He steps to her and holds her close. 

She tips her head back to look at him. “Ask me what?”

“Were we planning to have another baby? Did I miss that meeting?”

“We didn’t exactly plan it,” Rose hedges.

“We didn’t? That means I didn’t plan it. Were you having meetings without me?”

She rolls her eyes and pushes away from him. “Remember the night we went out with my parents and you had too much wine because Mum thought hers tasted funny and you were convinced it was an alien wine?”

“It did taste funny. Is it my fault Jackie can’t tell what a decent wine tastes like if it doesn’t come from a box?” He pauses and frowns. “That night? But we didn’t...did we?”

She can’t help but laugh at the look of confusion on his face. “No, we didn’t. Not that night. You were too drunk.”

He scowls. “Time Lords do not get drunk.”

Rose nods solemnly. “You are absolutely correct.” And he is. Alcohol has no effect on Time Lords. He’s not a Time Lord, strictly speaking, and he’d never had much cause to drink to excess before. Any slight headaches he woke up with the day after such drinking he’d always chalked up to a weak human body.

“Then we did...I don’t remember that. I would have remembered that,” he says firmly. “Because you were wearing that little black - wait a minute. You were wearing that little black dress and those nice heels. Why didn’t we?”

“Because you were drunk, love,” Rose says patiently. “Now listen -”

“I do not get drunk. It’s not possible. And yet why else would I not attempt to make love to my wife when she’s wearing what you were wearing that night? And I’m fairly certain there were black underthings to match.”

“Oh, there were,” she assures him. “But you were too sick to do anything. I tried. But that’s the night we had the conversation.”

“About what?” He’s still distracted by the memory of that black dress. It’s been a rough few days for him.

“About a baby.”

Now her circular conversation is starting to make sense to him. Abandoning the black dress, as well as hopes of perhaps seeing her in it fairly soon, he focuses his attention on her.

“I don’t recall talking about another baby.”

“That’s because you’d had too much to drink.”

“Rose Tyler! Did you take advantage of me?” he asks indignantly.

“First of all, we’ve already established that I did not, because you weren’t able to participate. Second of all, it was your idea to merge our names, so the least you could do is call me by my proper name. And third -”

“Spare me your outrage, Rose Tyler-Smith. Did we or did we not have a conversation about another child while I was - apparently, and this has not yet been established to my satisfaction - while I was hungover from drinking your mum’s expensive French wine?”

Rose looks up at the ceiling. “I believe that’s how it may have happened.”

“That’s cheating!”

“I’d been meaning to bring it up for a while. It seemed a good time. I had new black underthings! And I bought new shoes. You would go and get sick and ruin my plans.” She glares at him as though he was blame for everything.

Well. He’s certainly had a tendency to blame himself for every problem in the world in the past, but a man has to draw the line somewhere. “So we had a conversation about a baby while I was too out of it to notice. Very nice. That is _so_ cheating.” He pauses. “Then when did it happen?”

She sighs. “The next week, actually. While the kids were next door playing with Kate and Leo.”

He stares at her, mouth open. “The day we-”

She nods.

“After I came back from-”

She nods again.

He sighs and shakes his head. “Bloody Torchwood.”

“I thought it was rather nice.”

“Rose! I come home from hospital with a bloody wound the size of a melon-”

“It was a life-affirming event,” she says solemnly. “With the bonus of creating a life.”

He is well and truly speechless. “Well. Lovely. And because you hadn’t mentioned it to me, you’ve been walking around pregnant for weeks and weeks, flitting from world to world, being chased by aliens and being zapped by dimension manipulators and never telling your poor sod of a husband. We’ll be lucky if she’s not born with an extra arm or something!”

“She’s perfectly normal.”

“And you had a scan done, that’s right! And you still didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t want to be taken out of the search for Tony.”

“Rose, you went on desk leave when you were pregnant with Jack. You did that voluntarily. Why would you risk it this time?”

“You working in the field is one thing. Going to where Tony has gone was something else. I was not going to have something happen to you!” Rose stops yelling and tries to calm down. “Haven’t we already had this conversation?”

“Multiple times, it seems.” He sighs. “We’ll be lucky to get out of this alive, Rose.”

“With all of us here to work on it? It will take no time at all.” Her bluster doesn’t fool him, and truthfully, it doesn’t fool herself.

“We have a very big problem here, Rose.”

“I know.”

“You know. Of course you know! This...this is the very worst thing that could have happened! I left you at home with our children, and you decided to leave them behind to come find me.”

“I’m being blamed for that now?” she demands.

“No, Rose. I’m not blaming you. But I left with the expectation that you would stay with them and take care of them if something happened to me!”

“Now we’re together. If we can’t get back at least we’ll have each other.”

“And Tony? Will he be okay without your parents? And what about Jackie? She’ll lose everyone in one go!”

Rose closes her eyes. “Mum will know. She’ll understand.”

“Oh, Rose. No, she won’t. She’ll never stop grieving.”

“I don’t know how the kids got here, love. But I didn’t do it. I would never have risked it to get them here.”

He rubs his hands over his face. “I know that, Rose. But they don’t belong here. None of us do. If we died here at least they would have been raised by your parents.”

“They would have wondered what had happened to us. And to Tony.”

“If we live, we’ll have them all here. It’s better than raising this baby on this world without Jack and Lily. Isn’t it? Oh, your poor mother.”

He loves Jackie. Rose knows this, even if he would never admit it. She loves Jackie, too, and that’s what hurts about this.

“If we can’t get back, we can raise them all here. All three kids and Tony, too.”

He sighs. There is one truth here, and she’s not willing to face it. “We don’t belong here. Not anymore. There’s only room for one Doctor, and it’s not me.”

 

“This,” the Doctor says to himself, “is the strangest trip I’ve ever taken.”

“Are you counting the time on Aurellion Prime? Because that got us three deaths sentences, as I recall.”

Turning, the Doctor sees...him standing there. It’s strange, feeling that connection. It’s not as strong as it would be with another full-fledged Time Lord, but it’s undeniably there.

Rose’s husband looks around. “Where is everyone?”

“Your Torchwood coworkers are exploring. I think they’re having a hard time accepting the whole “bigger on the inside” thing.”

“Humans.”

“You speak from experience?” The Doctor leans against the console and folds his arms.

“Years of observation. Rose is lying down,” he says, answering an unspoken question.

“Is she feeling all right?”

“Just tired. Happens a lot when she’s pregnant. I might have noticed something, if we hadn’t been so busy lately.”

The Doctor nods. “Parallel world travel will do that to you. I’ve closed down some breaches. They’re incredibly stubborn.”

“Can we get them all?” He goes to the computer monitor to see for himself.

“I think so. Have a look.”

When Jack Harkness finds them, they’re both wearing glasses, identical frowns of concentration on their faces.

“Find anything, Doctor?”

“No,” they say together.

“Kids are getting restless. Tony’s in charge now. Hope that’s okay.”

“They’re fine,” Rose’s Doctor says absently, still focused on an equation. “Tony’s a good kid most of the time.”

“Rose is a good counter to Jackie, I bet,” the Doctor says from the other side of the computer.

“Well, it’s not just Rose,” he says, slightly offended. “I’ve had some part in it, too.”

“In what?” Tony asks.

“In raising you to be a normal boy.”

“Yeah. You were pretty cool. Are we there yet?” the normal boy asks. “This is dead boring. What happened to all the field work and danger to life and limb that Mum’s always talking about?”

“That’s overrated. Where are Jack and Lily?”

“Watching a movie. This TARDIS seems to like them. It keeps playing the same thing over and over.”

The Doctor can’t quite suppress a smile. Those children are part Time Lord and therefore part of him. A slight part, but it’s there, and the TARDIS is responding to it rather cheerfully. He can’t help feeling cheerful about it as well.

“The TARDIS will do whatever they ask of her.”

“Really?”

“I think so. Well, within reason.”

Tony shakes his head. “What’s going on?”

“We’re closing up some breaches. Once enough are closed, we should be able to get you all home safely.”

“How soon if we do it not-so-safely?”

Rose’s Doctor taps him on the head. “Go away. Practice what you’ll say to your mother.”

“Before or after she finishes yelling?”

“Oh, after. Definitely after. We’ll be home soon. Safely.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“It’s always true.”

“You always come home. Not always safely.”

He looks up, arrested. For the first time he sees that Tony has always known the truth, despite his young age. Torchwood is a dangerous place, and no matter how hard they tried to conceal it from him, he knows exactly what the risks are.

“It’s the ‘coming home’ part that matters, Tony,” he says finally. “And we always come home.”

 

Jack takes a frantic call from his team and leaves the console room. He returns wearing his coat and carrying his gear.

“It’s getting bad, Doctor. Bring me back to Cardiff. I need to hold off the chaos there. Take care of things here and close up whatever’s causing all this.”

“Jack -”

“Please.” Jack holds his gaze for a long moment. “I want to stay and help you, Doctor, but I have to get back. We’re the only thing down there preventing the bad guys from winning.”

“All right,” the Doctor says finally. He sets the controls, lands close enough to the Hub for Jack to meet his team.

Jack hesitates at the door. “I gotta go. Doctor - I’ll see you soon. And Doctor - if you don’t come back before you go home - thanks for naming your kid after me. Give Rose all my love.”

And Jack Harkness is gone, heading off to save the world once more.

The Doctor stands there, staring after Jack. It’s still hard to watch his friends head off into danger.

“He’ll be all right.”

The Doctor jerks back to attention. “I know. How do you hurt a man who can’t die?”

“Make him human,” comes the answer before he can stop it.

The Doctor stares at him.

“Sorry. Rose tells me I have some issues still, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize! You didn’t cause it. I ought to thank you, anyway.”

“What for?”

“For Rose.”

After a pause, the Doctor feels compelled to point out the obvious. “You haven’t thanked me.”

“No,” he agrees. “Shall we go?”

 

The TARDIS is very fond of the children. When Lily gets tired of the movie it obligingly switches to music. Pink and blue lights start to swirl around the room, making her laugh.

“Do red and green!” she cries. “We can pretend it’s Christmas!”

“I don’t think it matters what time or day it is in here,” her brother says. “Things don’t work the same here.”

“I don’t care. I like it here.” Lights start to blink on the floor, and she starts to jump on them, hopping from light to light. “Where’s Mummy?”

“Sleeping.” Jack has found a book and is lying on his stomach, reading.

“Why’s she sleeping? Let’s go get her. She’d like to jump.”

“Dad said to leave her alone for a while. Want to read with me? There’s room for two,” he offers.

“No, no, no,” she chants, punctuating each no with a hop. “Is he the Doctor, really? The other one?”

“Mum said he was.” Jack turns the page. “I don’t think this is in English,” he says thoughtfully.

Lily hops over. “It’s in Venusian,” she tells him. “The TARDIS wants you to think it’s English.”

“Why would it do that?”

“I don’t know. It just does.”

He looks carefully at the cover. “Weird sort of trick.”

“It’s not a trick,” his father’s voice says from behind them. “She’s helping you to read it.”

“The TARDIS does a lot of things to help. Sometimes even when you don’t want help.” The other Doctor is behind their father. Jack and Lily stare at him for a long moment.

The TARDIS greets his arrival with a new song. Lily stops hopping.

“What is that?” she demands. 

“Ha! _Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick.”_ Her father says this with a great big grin and looks at her expectantly.

Lily stares at him. “What?”

“That’s a silly title,” Jack observes.

“No taste,” the Doctor says sadly. “Your children are very human.”

“Ian Dury’s not so big in our world, at any point in time. Shame, really.”

The TARDIS senses disapproval and starts up a new tune. The Doctor recognizes the melody as the one his counterpart has been humming off and on since his arrival. Lily starts to jump around the room again.

“Come on!” she says to Jack. 

“No.”

The music picks up speed, and finally he’s forced to his feet. Soon he’s jumping behind Lily.

“Mad as loons, both of them,” their father says with a smile. His smile turns to a grin, and then turns to laughter. Yes, he’s on the wrong world. But he has his children. Rose is here. They’re having a baby. No matter what happens now, they’re together.

He joins his children as they dance around the room. Lyrics start to play along with the music. The children immediately pick up the lyrics and start to sing.

_“We'll go dancing  
And then we'll do it again  
Oh oh oh oh oh oh  
Talking 'bout the same old things  
I recall the simple whoa oh”_

Jack punctuates this last line with hand gestures. Lily keeps moving, a look of serious determination on her face.

_“You wore flowers  
That's the funny thing  
You don't even try  
Hi hi hi hi hi  
Whoa oh oh oh oh oh  
Whoa uh oh oh oh ohoh”_

Their father urges them on, clapping in time to the music.

_“Who sent me roses  
Who sent me flowers  
Who said they saw me on the TV show  
That just the way  
Offer hospitality  
Never mind the things you don't know”_

Tony comes into the room. He hears the music and sighs.

Jack and Lily dance around, singing at the top of their lungs. They bounce into each other and then into the Doctors’ legs. Both Time Lords stagger backwards.

Lily finishes up with a flourish of her arms. “Hi hi hi hi HI!”

She stands there as if waiting for applause. Her brother obliges.

“Our, er, song of choice lately.”

The Doctor smiles. “Lovely.” 

No matter what happens next, he’s happy. He meant to give Rose a fantastic life, and he did. He clearly succeeded. Part of him gets to share that with her, part of him gets to go on in these children. It wasn’t the perfect plan, but it was close enough.

“I can feel your smugness from over here.”

“You’re welcome.”

 

Rose finds them in the console room. Jack and Lily are lounging on the captains chair, right where she used to sit and watch the Doctor tinker.

The Doctor is underneath the grating, right where she expected him to be. Her husband is guiding something on the computer monitor.

“Hi, mum,” Jack greets her. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah.” Rose smoothes back his hair as he comes to give her a hug. “I am better, thanks.” She marvels at how tall he’s getting. He’ll be as tall as his father someday, if not taller. “What are you doing?”

“Watching home movies,” the Doctor tells her from the floor.

“Have you got home movies here?” she asks, confused. “What about?”

Her own Doctor holds up some wires. “Tony’s. We’re going to attach his recorder to here.”

“Aren’t there breaches to close?” she asks. “A world to save and all that?”

“We’ve tracked down five already. Once we have the kids occupied we’ll go on.”

“Where are the others?”

“Jack is gone. He went to help his team with something in Cardiff. Once we’re done we’ll go back and check on them. Simon and Riley are making sure their scanners and trackers are working.”

“Jack’s gone?” She can’t help but be surprised. She thought he’d at least tell her goodbye.

“Something’s happening back at his place. He wanted to go fix it.”

“Where’s Tony?”

“He’ll be right back,” her husband says carelessly.

“But he’s here, yeah? He didn’t walk off with Jack or anything?”

“I’m here, Rose. You don’t have to act like my mother all the time.”

”Someone has to,” she retorts.

“This is the longest holiday ever,” Simon complains as he and Riley come in. “We’re trailing behind everyone, walking around this enormous ship, waiting for something to happen.”

“It will happen very soon,” the Doctor assures him. “Here we go.”

They’ve rigged Tony’s recording device to the TARDIS computers, allowing the images to appear life size and in 3-D.

“I ought to apologize in advance,” Rose warns the others. “Tony’s video captures tend towards his friends, and they’re usually trying to see how many cheeseburgers they can eat at one go or something.”

As the TARDIS heads towards the next breach, everyone watches the hologram-like images. The images are whirling by in a rapid blur, much to the appreciation of the children.

“That’s Granny!” Lily cries happily. “There’s me on my bike!”

“Can we play a game instead?” Jack wants to know. “We’ve seen all these.”

People and places zip by, Pete and Jackie and people the Doctor doesn’t recognize. Simon and Riley, Jake Simmonds and others. Rose, standing with her husband, holding a small infant. Rose with a small boy, clearly pregnant again. Her Doctor, wearing shorts and a t-shirt and waving a surfboard. Beside him, Jack is a miniature version of his father, wearing identical clothing and holding a smaller surfboard.

“That was a nice holiday,” Jack says with satisfaction. “I almost drowned.”

“Twice,” his father agrees. “And then your mum taught you how to do it properly.”

“What - you don’t surfboard?” the Doctor asks him. “Seems easy enough - maintaining balance upon the water’s surface.”

“There were aliens in the water,” Lily says seriously. “Big aliens that swim and eat up surfboards.”

“They didn’t eat the surfboards,” her brother corrects her. “They wanted to eat the people on the surfboards. But dad stopped them.”

“Merely a matter of disabling their breathing devices,” their father says grandly. “Nothing to it. Although the town did throw us a very nice dinner as thanks.”

The Doctor lifts his head as the TARDIS beeps a warning. “I think we’re nearing another breach.” 

“We’ll get our stuff,” Riley says, and heads back to wherever she’s keeping her supplies.

“Come on, guys,” Simon tells the kids. He moves the recorder, his wires, and everything else to a room next to the console room. The children troop in without complaint.

Rose’s Doctor stands beside her as she watches the Doctor track the next breach. “How do you feel?”

“Better, thanks.” She wants badly to hold on to him, to feel his arms around her and reassure her that everything will be all right, even if it’s a lie. She doesn’t, because the Doctor is there and she doesn’t want to hurt him. He left that beach in Norway as she was kissing his human counterpart, and she still doesn’t know if he left because he wanted to or because he couldn’t stand to see it.

She will never know, because she will never have the nerve to ask him. 

Her husband knows what she is thinking. Not all the time, not by a long shot, because after all, he’s a human male, Time Lord bits or not. He wraps his arm around her waist.

The Doctor is aiming for the breach. “Your children are charming,” he says. “Very talkative.”

“They’re both very bright,” Rose says eagerly, glad for an opening to talk about the family they’d been concealing. “They’re human, but they have little Time Lord minds.”

The Doctor looks up at this.

“In their case, it just means they can read and write earlier than normal,” Rose’s Doctor explains. “And walk and talk earlier. And multiply in their heads at the age of four. Well, Jack could. Lily’s not four yet. She can only add and subtract six digit numbers in her head.”

“It’s a bit weird,” Rose admits. “Not fun having kids who are smarter than you are.”

The Doctor smiles. “I’m sure they’re brilliant.”

“One heart each.” Rose’s Doctor says, answering a thought in his head. “They’re human.”

“Then they’re definitely brilliant.” He pauses. “And beautiful.”

He is happy for her. Rose smiles at him. “They’re only here because of you.”

“Well, I don’t know that I’d go that far,” her husband disagrees.

The TARDIS lurches and throws them all to the side. “Oh, no.” The Doctor reaches for a lever.

The TARDIS shakes and then lands with a thump.

“What’s happened?” Rose asks in alarm.

Her husband bends his head over the monitor. “We’re on land. What planet is this?”

The Doctor shoulders him out of the way. “Is it Earth? Can’t be - we were millions of miles away.”

“Bloody hell. We’re going to be pulled all around the universe for an eternity if we don’t stop this.”

“Well, only one way to fix this.” The Doctor grabs his coat and heads for the door.

“I don’t see anything,” he says from the doorway.

Simon is suddenly there, weapon primed and ready. “Let me, Doctor. Ready?” he asks Riley.

“Ready,” she confirms.

A quick scan of the outside turns up nothing.

“It’s clear,” Simon says to the others.

Rose and both Doctors come out. Jack and Lily follow, already knowing enough to stay close to an adult. Tony brings up the rear, slowly. He’s eager for adventure, slightly unsure of what to do when that possibility suddenly presents itself.

Riley looks around. “Well. A whole lot of nothing.”

Tony walks a few meters farther out, taking Riley’s words at face value.

“It’s quiet,” he intones. _“Too_ quiet.”

Riley rolls her eyes.

“Surely there’s a better cliche than that,” Rose’s Doctor complains.

Tony takes another step and then a dark shadow suddenly covers the space where they’re all standing.

“Blimey, I take it back!” Tony says hastily.

A burst of laser fire hits near him, and Riley leaps forward to grab Tony’s arm. “Don’t move!”

Another burst hits even closer.

“Into the TARDIS!” the Doctor shouts.

“No, Riley!” Simon aims his gun up in the sky and he starts to fire at the ship above them. 

“Don’t move!” Rose yells. “Tony, don’t move!” Her husband grabs her arm to yank her back to safety.

Simon moves closer to Riley, continuing his cover fire. Riley pulls out her dimension manipulator. The risk of travel right now is serious, but the threat of being hit by laser fire is even more serious.

“Go!” Simon and Rose scream at her, and she hugs Tony tight. A blast singes Simon’s boots. Riley hits the dimension manipulator and a blast tears open the ground where they’ve been standing.

They vanish.

Abruptly, the ship vanishes, too.

Simon lowers his gun, staring up at the sky.

“It’s gone,” Rose says. “Are they connected? What just happened?”

The Doctor restrains Jack, who’s about to follow his father.

Rose’s Doctor moves out away from the others. Simon stands still, watching him.

“Nothing!” Rose’s Doctor calls back.

A shiver runs down Rose’s spine. “Come back,” she says, starting to walk to him. She suddenly encounters a barrier, invisible but very solid. She bounces back and blinks in surprise.

He starts back, reaching for her. Rose has raised her hand to him, trying to reach past the barrier.

And then he vanishes.


	5. Chapter 5

Impossible Adventures Through Time and Space - A Missing Scene

The TARDIS is humming with contentment. The Doctor is there, where he belongs. And the other Doctor, the one born right here in the console room. He is back. And Rose Tyler is here, as she should be.

And children. Small children who carry within them a familiar spark of the Time Lords of Gallifrey. 

The TARDIS has not been this satisfied in a long while. She allows the two Doctors to fuss over her interior systems, tinkering with wires that are functioning perfectly.

Rose’s Doctor peers at the computer screen, works out where the TARDIS is taking them. Of course. If there is one breach left, leaving a hole between this world and the other, of course it would be in the same exact spot as before. Honestly, he thinks to himself in annoyance, is the universe - both universes - so much against him that they can’t offer the slightest effort to make things easier? He glances at Rose and stays silent, trying to work out an alternative.

He can’t think of one. He reaches for the controls instead. “We’re not going back to Norway,” he says in a low voice. “I won’t do that to her.”

“It’s where the last opening is,” the Doctor points out.

“So?” He’s not going back to Norway, not stepping foot onto that beach again. He’s not going to put Rose through that again. He knows where he wants to go, and he works the controls and lands them right where he wants to land. 

“Lovely,” Rose’s husband says with no small sense of satisfaction. He stands in the doorway, watching his children run outside.

“Oh, good job!” Rose tells him, following Jack and Lily outside.

Both Doctors follow her out. They’ve landed in a garden. A stone wall surrounds the green grass, and the back of a pretty light blue house is at the front of it. Flowers grow in wild masses by the stone wall and in brightly colored pots around the edges. Two small bicycles are propped up by the side of a small child’s cottage, a smaller version of the house.

“We’re home,” he says unnecessarily.

“It’s beautiful,” the Doctor says sincerely, looking around. “Do those flowers belong to Rose?”

“Are you kidding? She kills anything she touches. Jackie sends a gardener round to make sure things stay green.”

A man’s head pops up above the fence. “You’re back, then,” he says. “We heard all the noise, and I told Maggie it could only mean they Tyler-Smiths are back home.”

“Hello, George. How are you?”

“Well enough.”

Beside George a woman comes up. “You’re home!” she says in delight. “And you brought your brother with you! How lovely! How absolutely lovely.”

The Doctors exchange a long look and shift uncomfortably.

“Yes. My brother. Doctor, er, Smith.”

“How do you do?” The Doctor smiles and raises a hand.

“Goodness, you’re as like as two peas in a pod, aren’t you? And another doctor, fancy that. Are you staying long?”

“He’s just passing through. He travels a lot.”

“Enjoy your stay,” they tell the Doctor.

“Thank you. I will.” They watch the neighbors head inside their house.

“They seem nice.”

“They are. Always send cookies round at Christmas.”

The children have gone up to a Victorian lamppost, standing at the edge of the lawn. As they come closer it abruptly turns into a blue police box, a copy of the Doctor’s own.

The Doctor starts in surprise.

“We grew a TARDIS,” he is told, somewhat unnecessarily. “Donna’s instructions were spot on.”

They stand there, hands in their pockets, legs braced in an identical posture, as they watch the blue police box turn hot pink, then blue again, then pink. Then it changes to a stone angel.

“Oi! No weeping angels!” both Doctors yell out, and the TARDIS obediently returns to a blue police box before finally changing to a red one.

“She’s bit temperamental about the chameleon circuit,” Rose’s Doctor is forced to admit. “But at least she always goes where I want.”

“What’s it like, living an ordinary life?”

“House and mortgage and doors and carpets?”

“Yes.”

Rose’s Doctor looks around. Rose and his children are encouraging the TARDIS to show off all of her disguise skills. His mobile phone starts to ring. Above them in the sky, a large spacecraft suddenly appears, sending down a traveling beam. Sirens start to scream off in the distance and a helicopter flies up to the ship, blaring out a warning to stop immediately.

“As ordinary lives go,” he says thoughtfully, “this one’s not so bad.”

“I’m glad of it,” the Doctor says.

“Look, Doctor!” Lily calls. They both turn in her direction, in time to see the TARDIS go plaid in pink and purple tones. Just as quickly it changes to a tiny dollhouse.

“Lily-Rose, have you been tinkering again?” Rose demands.

“No, Mum.”

“Why is that happening, then?”

“I think she just likes the design,” Lily says innocently.

Rose’s Doctor scratches his head. “Lily likes to tinker.”

The Doctor has been gazing soberly at their TARDIS. “They’re linked to us,” he says. “A telepathic bond. What happens...” He can’t bring himself to say it.

“What happens when I die?”

He sighs heavily. “Yes.”

“When we were growing her we wondered the same thing. Wondered if we ought to do it. You seemed to think we should, so we kept at it.”

“I wanted Rose to have whatever she wanted.”

“Don’t be a daft idiot. She wanted you. To pretend anything else would be an insult. Luckily, she came to her senses pretty quickly.”

“About the TARDIS or you?” the Doctor can’t help asking.

“Shut up,” Rose’s Doctor says amiably. “The TARDIS is alive. She’s linked to us. I don’t think she’ll exist as long as the others - I’m not a Time Lord so part of that link is gone. There’s Jack and Lily. And their children, in time. I think we’ll be all right.”

The Doctor nods. “You’ll do the right thing.”

“Oh, I know it. And there’s an Emergency Program in place. If something ever happens...” He pauses and looks straight at the Doctor, his eyes meeting identical eyes and holding the gaze for a long moment. “If something ever happens, I’ve programmed it. She’s to find a breach, a rift, any tiny crack she can, and lock onto your TARDIS.”

“You’ve programmed her to break across dimensions?” The Doctor doesn’t know whether to be impressed, amazed or horrified.

“If there’s a problem, and if something has happened to me, then Rose and the children will need your help. I don’t expect it to ever come to that, but don’t be surprised if they ever land on your doorstep. Or if I do.”

“That’s fine.” The Doctor clears his throat. “Or your grandchildren. Or...others. I expect I’ll be around for a bit after you’ve, after you’re...”

“Not around?” Rose’s Doctor supplies helpfully. “It’s all right, we can laugh about it now.”

“I didn’t trap you here because I thought you were dangerous,” the Doctor says suddenly.

“No? That’s the reason you gave.”

“Well, partly because I thought you were dangerous,” the Doctor amends. “You were broken. I knew Rose could help you.”

A long pause. “She did. Oh, she did. But that’s not why you did it, is it?” He looks closely at the Doctor.

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t. We don’t share the same mind anymore, remember?”

The Doctor winces. “Don’t. What an image.” He runs his hand through his hair and faces the other head on. “It was chaos after Davros was killed.”

“Stop. Just stop right there. It’s me you’re talking to, not one of these impressionable humans. You could have left me anywhere. Rose would have stayed with you.”

“Rose is human.”

“She didn’t care.”

“I did! She was young, she didn’t understand. I thought this would be easier for her.”

“It wasn’t easy. It was worth it, but it wasn’t easy. This? A home and a family, chasing down aliens before dinner each night? Harder than anything I’ve ever done.”

“I gave her to you. Be grateful.”

“I am. Now it’s time for you to forgive yourself. You did the best you could do. We all know that.”

“I know.” And he does. For the first time, the Doctor really does know. Rose Tyler and the Doctor - a part of him, anyway - living on, day after day.

“You can remember that. After we’re gone. That we had a life, that we had children who go on after us.”

The Doctor grins. He can’t help it. “Good.” He glances up at the sky, which is growing darker with approaching zeppelins. “Do you, er, need some assistance?”

Rose’s Doctor looks up at the sky. “Huh. Might be a standard traffic stop.”

“Traffic stop? Standard?”

“Zeppelin drivers are very impatient.”

The Doctor waits.

“Yes, I suppose a giant spaceship is not, strictly speaking, a good sign.”

“I’m thinking Racnoss. Or Sycorax.”

“Abzorbaloffs.”

“Hoix.”

“Or something else entirely. Something new.”

They stare at each other for a manic minute, starting to grin like mad idiots, and they’re about to run out of the garden when Rose’s voice stops them.

“Is that ship supposed to be up there?” she asks. “Or did it follow us through the breach?”

The Doctors wheel around to stare at her, then turn back to stare at the sky.

“The breach,” the Doctor repeats absently. “Of course.”

“Of course?” Rose says in surprise. “It needs to be closed off, doesn’t it?”

She doesn’t quite understand the look of regret that flashes across the Doctor’s features. She does understand the same look when she sees it on her husband’s face.

“Were you going to include me?” she asks in amusement. “Or were you going to run out there and save the world on your own?”

“On our own,” they assure her in unison.

“We still could,” Rose’s Doctor says hopefully.

“We could,” he agrees. “But if the breach closes up without me I’ll be trapped here. And if it stays open other things might come through and the universes won’t be able to repair themselves.”

Rose smiles sadly. “One last impossible adventure.”

“Would have been brilliant,” he agrees.

Rose tries to answer, but her throat is suddenly thick with tears.

“We’ll be all right,” her husband says for her. “If Torchwood’s not there already, they will be. We’re remarkably efficient for being a government agency.”

“Aliens happen a lot here?”

“Oh, yes. They love it on Earth. Love it. Treat it like it’s a holiday spot.”

“Not all of them,” Rose amends, now able to speak.

“I’d better be going.” The Doctor nods to his human self, hands shoved deep in his pockets. “Once the breach is closed you can be assured any aliens coming through belong to your universe.”

Rose manages to smile. The Doctor is standing before them, his TARDIS visible - to them - behind him. It’s an odd reenactment of that last day on Bad Wolf Bay. 

“Thank you, Doctor,” Rose says. “For...you know.”

“I do know.” He frames her face in his hands and smiles down at her. “I want you to be happy, Rose. Raise your children and fight aliens and have the most fantastic life you possibly can.”

“I want you to be happy,” she tells him. “Have adventures and save the world and make friends - lots and lots of friends. Don’t travel alone. Remember me. Not too much - just sometimes.”

He laughs softly. “Oh, Rose. How can I forget you? You changed my life the moment I met you, and I will always remember you.”

He looks over at her husband. “Goodbye, then.” It’s harder than he thought it would be, saying goodbye to both of them. For a brief moment he had found a brother, and now he is losing him again. Losing everyone he had thought of as his family.

“Take care.” They do not clasp hands or hug, but everything that needs to be said is said as their eyes meet for a long moment.

At the last moment Rose moves back to him and kisses him, a long, hard kiss that leaves him gaping at her.

She grins at him. “That was me, not Cassandra or anyone else. Just me kissing you.”

“Yes. Well. Thank you.” He clears his throat, then reaches for her and kisses her back. “That was me,” he tells her. “Just me.”

“Goodbye,” she whispers.

“Goodbye, Rose.” 

The TARDIS vanishes, leaving them alone in their garden with their children.

“Just you and me now,” he remarks.

“Just you and me,” she agrees.

“Forever?”

“Forever.”

“Too late for any regrets.”

“Stop that. I have no regrets. Why? Do you?”

“Never.” He pats his pockets and pulls out his mobile phone. It’s still ringing. He hands it to Rose, who switches it off. After the phone comes his key ring. Rose takes that as well. He finally finds what he’s looking for and pulls it out with a triumphant “Ha!”

“What is that?” she asks suspiciously.

“I stole the sonic screwdriver,” he says, without the slightest hint of shame or embarrassment.

“You what?”

“I’m never going to get a proper one built here. The materials aren’t right. He can get one as easy as he pleases.”

“You just stole it?”

“Right out of his coat,” he says cheerfully.

Rose sighs.

The back door to the house opens up. “Rose! Doctor! Oh, my loves, you’re home!” Jackie is scooping the children into her arms.

“How did she know? How did your mother possibly know we were home?”

“You see that big ship in the sky, don’t you?” Jackie asks. “What are you waiting for?”

They exchange a look and laugh, and then he grabs her hand.

“Let’s run, Rose Tyler.”

 

In the console room of the TARDIS, the Doctor stands alone, hands braced against the jumpseat. He’s all right this time. Not filled with pain over losing Rose at Torchwood Tower. Not devastated because he’s left her behind again with himself and now he must lose Donna.

This time he simply is. Rose and the Doctor are where they ought to be, and the Doctor is where he ought to be.

“Just you and me,” he tells his TARDIS, patting the controls affectionately. As if in response, a light blinks off and on, a light that should not be blinking at all.

“What’s the matter?” he asks her, getting down and peering at the light. “Had enough of traveling for a bit?”

The breaches are all closed off and he has time enough to do what he pleases. He heads for the time vortex. Once he’s there he looks at the light again. Still blinking. 

“We’ll take care of you,” he says out loud. “Gone through all the troubles in the universe, haven’t we? A blinking light is nothing to worry about, is it?”

The TARDIS hums in response. Another light goes out. The Doctor reaches for his pocket, finds it empty. “Hang on,” he tells the TARDIS, and goes to the rail where his coat is hanging. His pockets are not, strictly speaking, empty, but they are empty of one item.

His sonic screwdriver is gone.

Standing there, hands in pockets, deep in thought, he runs over his last few conversations with _him._ The Doctor comes to the only conclusion he can.

“My screwdriver! He stole my sonic screwdriver!”

He could swear that the TARDIS is laughing.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When this was first published in 2008, someone commented that they wished they could have seen Ten's reaction to losing the sonic screwdriver.

**Impossible Adventures Through Time and Space - A Missing Scene**

The TARDIS is humming with contentment. The Doctor is there, where he belongs. And the other Doctor, the one born right here in the console room. He is back. And Rose Tyler is here, as she should be.

And children. Small children who carry within them a familiar spark of the Time Lords of Gallifrey. 

The TARDIS has not been this satisfied in a long while. She allows the two Doctors to fuss over her interior systems, tinkering with wires that are functioning perfectly.

Rose’s Doctor peers at the computer screen, works out where the TARDIS is taking them. Of course. If there is one breach left, leaving a hole between this world and the other, of course it would be in the same exact spot as before. Honestly, he thinks to himself in annoyance, is the universe - both universes - so much against him that they can’t offer the slightest effort to make things easier? He glances at Rose and stays silent, trying to work out an alternative.

He can’t think of one. He reaches for the controls instead. “We’re not going back to Norway,” he says in a low voice. “I won’t do that to her.”

“It’s where the last opening is,” the Doctor points out.

“So?” He’s not going back to Norway, not stepping foot onto that beach again. He’s not going to put Rose through that again. He knows where he wants to go, and he works the controls and lands them right where he wants to land. 

“Lovely,” Rose’s husband says with no small sense of satisfaction. He stands in the doorway, watching his children run outside.

“Oh, good job!” Rose tells him, following Jack and Lily outside.

Both Doctors follow her out. They’ve landed in a garden. A stone wall surrounds the green grass, and the back of a pretty light blue house is at the front of it. Flowers grow in wild masses by the stone wall and in brightly colored pots around the edges. Two small bicycles are propped up by the side of a small child’s cottage, a smaller version of the house.

“We’re home,” he says unnecessarily.

“It’s beautiful,” the Doctor says sincerely, looking around. “Do those flowers belong to Rose?”

“Are you kidding? She kills anything she touches. Jackie sends a gardener round to make sure things stay green.”

A man’s head pops up above the fence. “You’re back, then,” he says. “We heard all the noise, and I told Maggie it could only mean they Tyler-Smiths are back home.”

“Hello, George. How are you?”

“Well enough.”

Beside George a woman comes up. “You’re home!” she says in delight. “And you brought your brother with you! How lovely! How absolutely lovely.”

The Doctors exchange a long look and shift uncomfortably.

“Yes. My brother. Doctor, er, Smith.”

“How do you do?” The Doctor smiles and raises a hand.

“Goodness, you’re as like as two peas in a pod, aren’t you? And another doctor, fancy that. Are you staying long?”

“He’s just passing through. He travels a lot.”

“Enjoy your stay,” they tell the Doctor.

“Thank you. I will.” They watch the neighbors head inside their house.

“They seem nice.”

“They are. Always send cookies round at Christmas.”

The children have gone up to a Victorian lamppost, standing at the edge of the lawn. As they come closer it abruptly turns into a blue police box, a copy of the Doctor’s own.

The Doctor starts in surprise.

“We grew a TARDIS,” he is told, somewhat unnecessarily. “Donna’s instructions were spot on.”

They stand there, hands in their pockets, legs braced in an identical posture, as they watch the blue police box turn hot pink, then blue again, then pink. Then it changes to a stone angel.

“Oi! No weeping angels!” both Doctors yell out, and the TARDIS obediently returns to a blue police box before finally changing to a red one.

“She’s bit temperamental about the chameleon circuit,” Rose’s Doctor is forced to admit. “But at least she always goes where I want.”

“What’s it like, living an ordinary life?”

“House and mortgage and doors and carpets?”

“Yes.”

Rose’s Doctor looks around. Rose and his children are encouraging the TARDIS to show off all of her disguise skills. His mobile phone starts to ring. Above them in the sky, a large spacecraft suddenly appears, sending down a traveling beam. Sirens start to scream off in the distance and a helicopter flies up to the ship, blaring out a warning to stop immediately.

“As ordinary lives go,” he says thoughtfully, “this one’s not so bad.”

“I’m glad of it,” the Doctor says.

“Look, Doctor!” Lily calls. They both turn in her direction, in time to see the TARDIS go plaid in pink and purple tones. Just as quickly it changes to a tiny dollhouse.

“Lily-Rose, have you been tinkering again?” Rose demands.

“No, Mum.”

“Why is that happening, then?”

“I think she just likes the design,” Lily says innocently.

Rose’s Doctor scratches his head. “Lily likes to tinker.”

The Doctor has been gazing soberly at their TARDIS. “They’re linked to us,” he says. “A telepathic bond. What happens...” He can’t bring himself to say it.

“What happens when I die?”

He sighs heavily. “Yes.”

“When we were growing her we wondered the same thing. Wondered if we ought to do it. You seemed to think we should, so we kept at it.”

“I wanted Rose to have whatever she wanted.”

“Don’t be a daft idiot. She wanted you. To pretend anything else would be an insult. Luckily, she came to her senses pretty quickly.”

“About the TARDIS or you?” the Doctor can’t help asking.

“Shut up,” Rose’s Doctor says amiably. “The TARDIS is alive. She’s linked to us. I don’t think she’ll exist as long as the others - I’m not a Time Lord so part of that link is gone. There’s Jack and Lily. And their children, in time. I think we’ll be all right.”

The Doctor nods. “You’ll do the right thing.”

“Oh, I know it. And there’s an Emergency Program in place. If something ever happens...” He pauses and looks straight at the Doctor, his eyes meeting identical eyes and holding the gaze for a long moment. “If something ever happens, I’ve programmed it. She’s to find a breach, a rift, any tiny crack she can, and lock onto your TARDIS.”

“You’ve programmed her to break across dimensions?” The Doctor doesn’t know whether to be impressed, amazed or horrified.

“If there’s a problem, and if something has happened to me, then Rose and the children will need your help. I don’t expect it to ever come to that, but don’t be surprised if they ever land on your doorstep. Or if I do.”

“That’s fine.” The Doctor clears his throat. “Or your grandchildren. Or...others. I expect I’ll be around for a bit after you’ve, after you’re...”

“Not around?” Rose’s Doctor supplies helpfully. “It’s all right, we can laugh about it now.”

“I didn’t trap you here because I thought you were dangerous,” the Doctor says suddenly.

“No? That’s the reason you gave.”

“Well, partly because I thought you were dangerous,” the Doctor amends. “You were broken. I knew Rose could help you.”

A long pause. “She did. Oh, she did. But that’s not why you did it, is it?” He looks closely at the Doctor.

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t. We don’t share the same mind anymore, remember?”

The Doctor winces. “Don’t. What an image.” He runs his hand through his hair and faces the other head on. “It was chaos after Davros was killed.”

“Stop. Just stop right there. It’s me you’re talking to, not one of these impressionable humans. You could have left me anywhere. Rose would have stayed with you.”

“Rose is human.”

“She didn’t care.”

“I did! She was young, she didn’t understand. I thought this would be easier for her.”

“It wasn’t easy. It was worth it, but it wasn’t easy. This? A home and a family, chasing down aliens before dinner each night? Harder than anything I’ve ever done.”

“I gave her to you. Be grateful.”

“I am. Now it’s time for you to forgive yourself. You did the best you could do. We all know that.”

“I know.” And he does. For the first time, the Doctor really does know. Rose Tyler and the Doctor - a part of him, anyway - living on, day after day.

“You can remember that. After we’re gone. That we had a life, that we had children who go on after us.”

The Doctor grins. He can’t help it. “Good.” He glances up at the sky, which is growing darker with approaching zeppelins. “Do you, er, need some assistance?”

Rose’s Doctor looks up at the sky. “Huh. Might be a standard traffic stop.”

“Traffic stop? Standard?”

“Zeppelin drivers are very impatient.”

The Doctor waits.

“Yes, I suppose a giant spaceship is not, strictly speaking, a good sign.”

“I’m thinking Racnoss. Or Sycorax.”

“Abzorbaloffs.”

“Hoix.”

“Or something else entirely. Something new.”

They stare at each other for a manic minute, starting to grin like mad idiots, and they’re about to run out of the garden when Rose’s voice stops them.

“Is that ship supposed to be up there?” she asks. “Or did it follow us through the breach?”

The Doctors wheel around to stare at her, then turn back to stare at the sky.

“The breach,” the Doctor repeats absently. “Of course.”

“Of course?” Rose says in surprise. “It needs to be closed off, doesn’t it?”

She doesn’t quite understand the look of regret that flashes across the Doctor’s features. She does understand the same look when she sees it on her husband’s face.

“Were you going to include me?” she asks in amusement. “Or were you going to run out there and save the world on your own?”

“On our own,” they assure her in unison.

“We still could,” Rose’s Doctor says hopefully.

“We could,” he agrees. “But if the breach closes up without me I’ll be trapped here. And if it stays open other things might come through and the universes won’t be able to repair themselves.”

Rose smiles sadly. “One last impossible adventure.”

“Would have been brilliant,” he agrees.

Rose tries to answer, but her throat is suddenly thick with tears.

“We’ll be all right,” her husband says for her. “If Torchwood’s not there already, they will be. We’re remarkably efficient for being a government agency.”

“Aliens happen a lot here?”

“Oh, yes. They love it on Earth. Love it. Treat it like it’s a holiday spot.”

“Not all of them,” Rose amends, now able to speak.

“I’d better be going.” The Doctor nods to his human self, hands shoved deep in his pockets. “Once the breach is closed you can be assured any aliens coming through belong to your universe.”

Rose manages to smile. The Doctor is standing before them, his TARDIS visible - to them - behind him. It’s an odd reenactment of that last day on Bad Wolf Bay. 

“Thank you, Doctor,” Rose says. “For...you know.”

“I do know.” He frames her face in his hands and smiles down at her. “I want you to be happy, Rose. Raise your children and fight aliens and have the most fantastic life you possibly can.”

“I want you to be happy,” she tells him. “Have adventures and save the world and make friends - lots and lots of friends. Don’t travel alone. Remember me. Not too much - just sometimes.”

He laughs softly. “Oh, Rose. How can I forget you? You changed my life the moment I met you, and I will always remember you.”

He looks over at her husband. “Goodbye, then.” It’s harder than he thought it would be, saying goodbye to both of them. For a brief moment he had found a brother, and now he is losing him again. Losing everyone he had thought of as his family.

“Take care.” They do not clasp hands or hug, but everything that needs to be said is said as their eyes meet for a long moment.

At the last moment Rose moves back to him and kisses him, a long, hard kiss that leaves him gaping at her.

She grins at him. “That was me, not Cassandra or anyone else. Just me kissing you.”

“Yes. Well. Thank you.” He clears his throat, then reaches for her and kisses her back. “That was me,” he tells her. “Just me.”

“Goodbye,” she whispers.

“Goodbye, Rose.” 

The TARDIS vanishes, leaving them alone in their garden with their children.

“Just you and me now,” he remarks.

“Just you and me,” she agrees.

“Forever?”

“Forever.”

“Too late for any regrets.”

“Stop that. I have no regrets. Why? Do you?”

“Never.” He pats his pockets and pulls out his mobile phone. It’s still ringing. He hands it to Rose, who switches it off. After the phone comes his key ring. Rose takes that as well. He finally finds what he’s looking for and pulls it out with a triumphant “Ha!”

“What is that?” she asks suspiciously.

“I stole the sonic screwdriver,” he says, without the slightest hint of shame or embarrassment.

“You what?”

“I’m never going to get a proper one built here. The materials aren’t right. He can get one as easy as he pleases.”

“You just stole it?”

“Right out of his coat,” he says cheerfully.

Rose sighs.

The back door to the house opens up. “Rose! Doctor! Oh, my loves, you’re home!” Jackie is scooping the children into her arms.

“How did she know? How did your mother possibly know we were home?”

“You see that big ship in the sky, don’t you?” Jackie asks. “What are you waiting for?”

They exchange a look and laugh, and then he grabs her hand.

“Let’s run, Rose Tyler.”

 

In the console room of the TARDIS, the Doctor stands alone, hands braced against the jumpseat. He’s all right this time. Not filled with pain over losing Rose at Torchwood Tower. Not devastated because he’s left her behind again with himself and now he must lose Donna.

This time he simply is. Rose and the Doctor are where they ought to be, and the Doctor is where he ought to be.

“Just you and me,” he tells his TARDIS, patting the controls affectionately. As if in response, a light blinks off and on, a light that should not be blinking at all.

“What’s the matter?” he asks her, getting down and peering at the light. “Had enough of traveling for a bit?”

The breaches are all closed off and he has time enough to do what he pleases. He heads for the time vortex. Once he’s there he looks at the light again. Still blinking. 

“We’ll take care of you,” he says out loud. “Gone through all the troubles in the universe, haven’t we? A blinking light is nothing to worry about, is it?”

The TARDIS hums in response. Another light goes out. The Doctor reaches for his pocket, finds it empty. “Hang on,” he tells the TARDIS, and goes to the rail where his coat is hanging. His pockets are not, strictly speaking, empty, but they are empty of one item.

His sonic screwdriver is gone.

Standing there, hands in pockets, deep in thought, he runs over his last few conversations with _him._ The Doctor comes to the only conclusion he can.

“My screwdriver! He stole my sonic screwdriver!”

He could swear that the TARDIS is laughing.


End file.
